VACANCY & ARIEL

“We think you may have made a crossing.” He bent to the gun, peering at it. “Is this the weapon that caused the destruction at the cabin?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you notice any changes in your environment after using it?”

“Yeah, matter of fact. Just little stuff.”

He nodded. “The weapon must have created a slight backwash effect. I suppose it’s intended as a weapon of last resort.” He cut his eyes toward me. “It’s nothing to worry about. You’ve only gone a step or two away from your home. You probably won’t even notice the adaptation process.”

I decided to postpone consideration of this new cause for alarm and deal with what lay before me. “Is your name Rahul?”

“Yes, of course.”

I actually had the urge to hug him. “Jesus! This is ridiculous…what I’m feeling.”

“Not at all. You and Ariel are lovers no matter where you begin your journey. It’s the same for us. We’re friends. We share pleasant memories.” He smiled. “The strip club you took me to the night I arrived in Palo Alto.”

“Dirty Birds.”

“You see?”

“Remember the blonde you liked? You were so drunk, she gave you a lap dance and you proposed to her.”

“It was a cultural thing, not drunkenness,” Rahul said and smiled again. “As I recall, you were much drunker than I.”

“Different universes,” I said.

“That could explain it.”

Though we were technically strangers, I wanted to sit and reminisce, to pretend our connection was real…and maybe it was real, as real as any connection. But I needed to know where I stood and what might happen. I asked what the mission of the project was.

“We’re attempting to put an end to the proliferation of trans-multiversal travel,” Rahul said. “We haven’t come close to succeeding. Mostly we kill Ariels. Sometimes we kill Ishas, but Ariels are more dangerous. They habitually kill Ishas and then continue to travel across the Weave. We train Ishas to kill them.”

I was almost as startled by his characterization of Ariel as I had been on seeing the Rahuls. I told him I had seen nothing to suggest this sort of essential antagonism in Ariel’s books.

“Your wife’s books are memories imperfectly rendered. Romantically rendered. You can’t trust them.”

“And I should trust you?”

“I admit I have an agenda. All you can do is listen and draw conclusions.” Rahul settled himself more comfortably. “In the universe where you were born, you dropped out of Cal Tech and I died in a project whose instrumentality and direction were based upon your fundamental conceptions. In other universes, however, you finished your physics degree and met a woman named Ariel, whom you married. She was lovely, brilliant. Too domineering for my tastes. All three of us worked on the project and we succeeded in our work. You and Ariel had a violent falling out. The argument started over a project matter, but it seemed to acquire a life of its own. As if you’d been waiting for the chance to argue. In some cases it was your fault; in others it was hers. In almost every case, using the technology we created, Ariel fled and you followed.”

He flipped a switch and all the monitors came alive with the myriad faces of Ariels and Ishas.

“This happened throughout the multiverse. For some reason the Ariels all fled toward…” He paused, reflected. “For simplicity’s sake, let’s say toward the center of the multiverse. Toward one specific region. The Ishas followed. The stress of this concentrated travel broke down the barriers between certain universes. Some were affected catastrophically, thus weakening the underlying structure of all things. What your wife called the Weave. The problem has developed not only because of the millions of initial flights and pursuits. Most Ariels continue to flee, making multiple journeys, and Ishas continue to hunt them. New Ishas and Ariels are wakened to the chase…as with you. The stories of each couple vary to a degree, but they’re basically the same. Both Ariel and Isha are obsessed in their own fashion. Obsessed to the point of insanity in some instances. It’s as if they’re engaged in an archetypal dance. Yin and Yang. Kali and Shiva. The creative and the receptive. The Battle of the Sexes. In every culture there are a thousand metaphors for their conflict.”

I had no idea what my face was showing, but Rahul seemed to derive satisfaction from what he saw there.