The World Asunder Read online

  Sarabin injected a contribution. “Here’s a possibly related thing from St. Petersburg, and it’s sexless. There’s currently a lot of Dostoevsky-type guilt among Russian physical scientists, I got a strong dirty taste of it in a saloon-bull with Rostov and his top assistant Mischkin—”

  Chloris interjected, "Is Rostov the guy who supervised development of the Russian version of REM?”

  “Precisely. Well: Rostov was well into self-spoliation by his third drink, with Mischkin glooming and moaning, when Sonya Rostova—that’s his sister—joined us. After listening a bit, Sonya said ‘Fiddlesticks!’—that’s a free translation—and iced her brother and colleague with the truism that they had only been conscientious scientists, they’d followed and developed their scientific leads, they had no responsibility for consequent political choices.”

  From above, Mengrovia bit: “Great, Ilya, but pertinent how? Of course REM tortures the scientific conscience; how is that related to the proposed treaty, or to Kali?”

  Ilya gazed up at her. “Thanks, Ladyma: I was counting on it that you’d ask that question; it sets a focus while I go on and tell what Mischkin then said.” Looking across the circle at the commodore: “Mischkin then said, That might be true if it weren’t for the fact that Guru Kali is operating warm on one stratum and cold on another. Tell me, Meteorologist Sonya Rostova—what happens when warm winds and cold winds intersect in contiguous strata?’ Sonya got her mouth open to reply ‘tornado’—but her brother snarled, ‘Shut up, both of you’; and looking at me, I swear he seemed fearful, he bellowed for another round of drinks. That’s all.”

  Silence.

  Mallory shifted it. “This has been: China on the REM Device—and Russia on the REM Device with a vague suggestion of double-dealing by Kali. Anything from the United States?” The response was nil, except for a few headshakes. This meant that the United States, which possessed complete REM potency but also was pushing for a REM Treaty, had thus far dropped no Kali-pertinent hints which these captains or their officers had overheard or noticed. Mallory frowned: he recalled Esther’s information—Kali lobbying, President for it, forty-seven senators for it, forty-one against it, fourteen uncommitted—and recalled also his own concern that no captain or commander was ready to succeed him.

  “All right,” he snapped, redirecting it. “Zero in on Kali, then, in any connection at all. What do you currently have on him?”

  A lot of them started to volunteer something, then held back and looked around. They had a lot of current stuff on Kali, but each of them thought his information might be trivial and decided to wait for something important to come out.

  One of those who had got her mouth open, then shut it, was Chloris. Mallory decided to hit her. “Somebody has to start. Chloris, you start.”

  She glanced uncertain at Zeno; solemnly he nodded. She turned to the commodore and blurted, “About a month ago I spent a night with Kali. I will summarize it obliquely by saying that he gets his kicks with devices other than phallic penetration. And this is because he has no phallus. He is in every respect male—except that his genitals are female, and they aren’t functional.” She looked down, pursing lips, tapping fingernails on chair arms: “Pump me not, Commodore—but the way he gets his charge is, to arouse a woman with his mind, then reveal himself and enjoy her letdown. If “he” is the pronoun to use.”

  Shocked silence. Shock, not at the sexual attitude, but at the new-revealed anomaly....

  Mallory found words to break it “Bravo, Chloris: it may be insignificant, but every detail is pertinent now. Was there anything that he said—”

  She finger-rubbed her forehead, which flamed. “I don’t think so. I may get back to you.”

  “Good, Chloris, do that Now, the rest of you notice two things: first that Chloris was willing to be intimately candid before all of us in the interests of KP; second, that I have listened with attention to this item, which may be trivial and may be major. May each of you be both ways guided. Tell me what you have.”

  Zeno asserted soberly, “I hate to say what I’m going to say.”

  “Sex, my friend?”

  “Not sex, Commodore. I got into a bull session with him in Bangkok two months ago—I’ll keep on saying ‘he,’ Chloris—and he asked me if there was anything I’d always wanted. Knowing his reputation, I asked him if it was true that he could reify the impossible for me. He answered with his usual formula: if I would follow his prescription for finding my own inner light, and concentrate on my wish in that light, then after long horns of concentration excluding all except my need in the light of my inner light and in a mood of absolute faith, why then I would discover within myself new powers inherent in every human, and the impossible could come true for me. I expressed polite skepticism, and our evening broke up courteously on that note.”

  Mallory thought rather heavily. He queried, “Any sequel?” Zeno negated, smiling down, big hands clasped between high-racked knees, remarking: “Anything possible for me that I ever got, I got on the up-and-up; and anything impossible on the up-and-up I don’t want; and besides, I have no time to concentrate long hours on some inner light.”

  “But I have taken such time,” low said Ilya Sarabin.

  The story that Sarabin told merits verbatim repetition:

  “This I must now confess, it has been on my conscience.

  “I have not talked with the guru, but I have listened to him at one of his great meetings. He told us generally what he tells all his listeners, exactly what in private he told Zeno. I resolved to test the guru’s teaching, having long ago found independently what I considered to be my inner light.

  “I fabricated an impossible test-wish and recorded it as a dated entry in my personal log. The wish depended on the fact, a matter of public record, that my father and mother were publicly executed by a Nazi firing squad near Stalingrad in nineteen forty-four as spies for the Russian government; I was then an infant. My wish was that my father and mother would return alive to me, and that they would be healthy, reasonably prosperous, and unscarred by the firing squad; all these conditions were made essential in the structure of my wish.

  “That same night I secreted myself aboard ship, found my inward light in a way that I have learned, engendered a fullness of undoubting faith, and during many hours leaned emotionally hot against the dream until soon after dawn I lost consciousness. At that time I lay at anchor off Baklava, which is as you know a Georgian port on the Black Sea.

  “Well: at about ten thirty-five that same morning, I was awakened in my cabin by a peremptory knocking: it was my steward with word that two who claimed to be my father and mother awaited me aboard. You can conceive my confusion. I had them brought to me; they were accompanied by the town’s vigorously nonogenarian Greek Orthodox bishop-emeritus. He came to identify my parents of his own knowledge. My parents were old, but they looked hardy, my mother was profoundly emotional about the reunion with me her baby although she forebore to touch me until their identification had been satisfactorily completed with photographs and documents and the bishop’s testimony; my father was gnarled and stolid—at one point a tear oozed from one eye comer, but that was all.

  “When authenticity had been established and all four of us had embraced and my mother and I had laughed and cried and clung and cried and laughed and my father and I had embraced, at last it came into me that this had been an impossible test of Guru Kali’s teaching, and I remembered my essential conditions.

  “ ‘Are you healthy?’ I demanded. At that, the bishop and my mother laughed, and even my father smiled. My parents worked their own fields; they were as strong as oxen.

  “ ‘Are you prosperous?’ My father spread hands: every year during the past ten years he had been decorated by the government for being the most efficient manager of any collective farm in the district

  “I hesitated, then blurted, ‘Are you bullet-scarred by the firing squad?’ Inexplicably my parents turned pale and the bishop grew somber. I waited, anxious.


  “My father said dead, ‘We never faced the firing squad. Two of our cell mates in the POW concentration camp, a male and a female, insisted that our value to Russia was greater than theirs, we exchanged identity documents and bracelets, they were executed for us. We merely continued as prisoners until the Russians retook the area and freed us.’

  “Chilled, I studied my father while stolidly he eyed my feet and continued: ‘Months earlier, we had used our associations in Germany to leave you with a family we knew in Bavaria. Subsequently we tried all official channels to communicate with your foster parents, but the Soviet government silenced us; the identity-substitution must never be known, it must the with us. They shipped us to Georgia with private honors and good credentials under assumed names; we had strict orders on pain of death never to break our incognito in any way direct or indirect. However, under Church Sanctuary, eventually we confessed to the bishop, here, and gave him for safekeeping the documents and snapshots which you have seen; these as an experienced spy I had found means to bring out with me. In the photos you saw us holding you as an infant—if you have independent child-photos of yourself, you can compare; in the photos you saw our faces, and you see those young faces true now in our old faces only distorted by age and sorrow. Our one delight began seventeen years ago when I did find secret means to contact your Bavarian foster mother—already a widow, and dead now—and to learn about your own fortunes, my son. Until she died two years ago, your foster mother kept me advised of your letters to her and of your upward mobility in RP; when she died, through the bishop I established an RP contact and kept track of you further. When yesterday I learned that your yacht lay off Baklava, I consulted with your mother and with the bishop, and we resolved to make ourselves known to you.

  “ ‘Now, that is a long story, my son Ilya, but what it comes to is this. No, we are not bullet-scarred or otherwise wounded, because our friends bought our lives with their lives. And we joy in finding you alive and doing so well, and in embracing you again. But never in our lives will we cease to lacerate ourselves for letting our friends die for us. They were young, and she was two months pregnant with their first child; we too were young, but we had a child born and safe with friends. We should not have let them do it—’

  “My father broke down; my mother comforted him uselessly. The bishop took me apart and told me, ‘This visit is risky for all of us. We must depart immediately, already it is noon; do not try to seek us.’ I knew better than to stop them. We embraced once more, and they departed.

  “Commodore, colleagues—”

  Here Ilya Sarabin lost coinage: his head went down on his arms on his knees, and all his body began to shake. Mallory raised a hand, warning the conclave-comrades to hold a silent posture of respectful self-containment.

  After several minutes Ilya’s head came slowly up, and he looked around, and licked lips, and uttered, “I have done a great deal of brooding over this. I can show you the dated entries in my personal log. My wish came as close to being impossible of fulfillment as one can well imagine; and yet, on the very morning after the night when I faithfully followed the guru’s prescription, my wish was fulfilled in every specification.

  “I said that the matter has been on my conscience. You may wonder why I feel guilty. Let me try to explain, although I may break at any moment

  “The wish was fulfilled in all its specifications: my parents came alive to me, they are healthy, they are prosperous, they are unscarred by bullets, in miraculous refutation of what had been officially and historically established. But there is a damnable thorn in my mind, that somehow this was brought about by changing the actualities of the past.

  “In the first actuality, it seems that my parents were in fact slain by the firing squad; in the second actuality, substitutes were slain for them, and they escaped. Commodore, I keep asking my inner light: Was the first actuality truly actual? And did my impossible wish—call it a prayer, if you will—did that wish go back into time and exchange the second actuality for the first?”

  Ilya now seemed about to break again, and Mallory opened his mouth to thank him warmly and let him off; but Ilya waved a hand and struggled with himself and brought out one summary thought:

  “I had chosen my specifications most carefully, colleagues: healthy, prosperous, unscarred by bullets....

  “Only, I forgot one essential specification: they must be happy! And perhaps another, that no unhappiness should be created anew anywhere by the fulfillment of my wish.

  “Well: and the substitution of Actuality Two for Actuality One became—shall I say possible, inanely, because my specifications omitted the exclusion of unhappiness. And I—”

  He did break finally, then.

  The commodore stood. “We meet here again at two thousand hours tonight. Relax or caucus as you may until then. Adjourned.”

  As they all arose—except Ilya Sarabin, around whom clustered several good RP comrades—Captain Colette Perpignan, still seated, glared around at Mallory. The commodore bowed slightly to her: “Your pardon, Madame Chairman, for preempting you. Under the circumstances, I trust that some day you will find it in your heart to forgive me this breach of protocol.”

  Part Three

  JUNE 1952

  10.

  Aboard the Super-Constellation, before dinner:

  Stewardess: “Drink orders?”

  I (in the window seat): “Granddad if you have it, with a modest shot of water.”

  Dio (in the adjacent aisle seat): “Grapefruit juice.” Stewardess (hitting her ear with her right hand): “Pardon me, sir, a touch of prop-noise deafness, it’s occupational—I thought you said grapefruit juice.”

  Dio (nodding): “That’s right”

  Stewardess: “With bourbon!”

  Dio: “Just grapefruit juice. I take it straight”

  Stewardess: “Yes sir.” She departed.

  I: “In-spec-tor Horse!

  Dio (wry): “I don’t like it but I have this sobriety sense.” I: “No dinner, either?”

  Dio: “Big dinner. No booze.”

  I: “If you are staying sober, it’s a good thing I have the window seat.”

  Dio: “As soon as we begin the Paris approach, I’ll take over the window seat”

  I: ‘To see the Eiffel Tower from above?”

  Dio: ‘To watch the ground coming up to hit us.”

  I: “Not most people’s idea of good fun—”

  Dio: “When I die, I want to experience it happening. When after all I don’t die, that’s even better.”

  I (checking wristwatch): “Let’s see, now. We took off a twelve fifty-five EST afternoon; scheduled Paris touch-down one thirty-nine a.m. EST. But by then it will be seven thirty-nine a.m. in Paris. Yes, you can watch the ground come up-barring fog.”

  Dio: “Hey, that means we’re coming up on dinner late— midnight Paris time!”

  “I: “Venerable Moses, I knew I was too hungry—”

  Aboard the Super-Constellation, after dinner, long after dark: I: “Damn few people aboard. How come?”

  Dio: “All the people whose numbers were up stayed home. We’re secure.”

  I: “Also, we can sleep across two seats each. Sleepy, Dio?” He: “Not much time before touch-down—but I suppose I should.”

  I: “The situation is unconducive to dual stretch-out, even without any action.”

  He: “I have the outside seat, so I’m the one to head for the tail.”

  I (laying a hand on his thigh): “You’re sweet. I’ll hate to see you go.”

  He (laying a hand on my hand and speaking so low that I almost lost it in prop noise): “I was afraid maybe I blew it last night. I mean, it was great, for hours—but maybe you—” I (leaning back and closing eyes): “I like you, Dio. For a lot more than that. But I am not jealous of your Esther, and I will not be sticky.”

  Silence like that, except for the omnipresent bone-vibrating prop-snarl. I was by now resenting the snarl and recalling with envy reports from some of the
Korea fly-boys that jet planes would seem practically silent if you could be seated ahead of the engines. The thought momentarily diverted me from my emotional tangle, but only for a moment....

  Dio’s voice (while his hand squeezed my hand on his hard thigh): “I like you, and I want you, but I love Esther. That’s how it has to be, and I credit you with knowing it and agreeing.”

  I (eyes still closed): “Instead of you heading for the tail, why don’t we just nap together here?”

  He: “Great idea, I buy it. ’Night, Lil.”

  I: “Dio—”

  He (drowsy): “Beautiful?”

  I: “Why Paris?”

  He: “Dunno. Takeoff point. I’ll know.”

  I (wistful): “I’d enjoy taking time to do Paris—”

  He: “That would take at least a year. No chance, 111 be pulled out immediately.”

  I: “I meant to ask where we’re staying.”

  He: “Esther’s favorite place in all the world: Paris, Hôtel Odéon. Remember her note? One block from the Luxembourg Palace. She liked that little hotel—”

  It was interesting, how detached I felt from Dio and from Esther, yet how sympathetic with both and how ready for companionship and physical pleasure with him, yet meanwhile how intensely curious and indeed emotionally drawn with respect to the cockeyed Burk Halloran angle of this partner-quest. I inquired, with respect to the Odeon, “How long?” Dio: “Twenty-eight hours.”

  I (opening eyes wide): “Why that?”

  He: “After hotel-arrival, six hours sleep or whatever to recover from time change. Then five hours foot-cruising the Left Bank. Then three hours dinner at some place good, with wines natch. Two hours recovering from dinner. Eight hours in bed. Three hours to pull ourselves together and make a few phone calls and have dejeuner, which for us will be brunch. One hour to get to some depot in Paris traffic. That makes twenty-eight, with an assumption about train schedules—”