“I seem to recall you were trying to uncover your identity,” Gash said finally. “Are you happy now?”
“Not particularly, no, thank you.”
“Not even when the identity you revealed is a name out of legend, a major player on the world stage?”
“Especially not.”
“I see,” he said. “But you must have realized from the outset that innocent bystanders are rarely subjected to the Spell of Namelessness. Did you think you were some purged paladin, some force for good cast down for your threat to the powers that be?”
“I don’t know. I’m new around here. You tell me.”
“Certainly, the number who might be described by such a noble definition is vanishingly few,” he said with an air of contemplation, “whether among the ranks of the mighty or those insignificant others you appear to prefer to seek yourself among.”
I slumped down further in the seat. “Good guys or not, I didn’t expect I’d be a major scourge on the world.”
“Yes. We should clearly discuss that aspect of the situation. What do you think he might be doing at the moment?”
“He’s suppressed, asleep, under control.”
“Are you certain? The jolt administered by Monoch was scarcely enough to banish him, I’m sure you must know.”
I thought about it. Would I know if he was awake and listening in? At this point I figured I would. The relationship between him and me - leaving aside for the moment the metaphysics behind those two referents when both of us were occupying the same body and the same brain - was not totally symmetrical. In the most recent stage I’d been able to watch him when he’d been active without causing him to black out or to know I was there; he’d thought I’d been eradicated. But could he be doing the same thing now to me? “Yeah, I’m pretty sure,” I lied. Only even if he was merely suppressed, what did I do now? What if he woke up again and tried to come back?
When he woke up again.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Why are you asking about him? Do you want to know from a concern from public safety or because you want to recruit him for some scheme of yours? How much did you have to do with bringing him out of hiding in the first place?”
He regarded me, and either I knew him well enough by now, or my insight was being supplemented from the time we’d shared the metabolic link that had let me pass myself off in his identity, or I’d played enough bid-and-bluff card games over the years, but I could virtually see the intricate orreries of his mind whirling in their epicycles, and then finally align themselves in decision. “l had my suspicions,” Gash said, “when we met, in Roosing Oolvaya, that there was more to you than was apparent on the surface. As far as l was concerned at the time, our initial meeting was happenstance. Subsequently one must question, as one must always question these things, but if a plan existed to bring us together its subtlety lies beneath the level of indifferentiable noise.
“As you know,” he went on, “there are always people who go about in disguise. Most often the masquerade is deliberate, occasionally not. In either case, being aware that some subterfuge is in progress is a very clear survival skill.” Gash leaned back and re-crossed his legs. “I fear that much you have attributed to paranoia or omnipotent machination is in reality the merely comprehensive application of principles of prudence. Omnipotence is all a matter of mirrors and smoke anyway, laid atop a mortar of superstition. Are we not men?”
“I assume you’re speaking rhetorically.”
Gash favored me with an occupationally inscrutable glance. “Don’t become caught up with labels. What is the practical definition of godhood if not one of power and demonstrable capability?”
“Well, you already did away with omnipotence, I guess, and I suppose by extension omniscience too, but what about creating and ruling the world, supernatural and eternal attributes, establishing ethical codes and -”
“There you’re mythologizing again. Your associate Maximillian would never speak that way, I assure you. If you examine your abilities as Iskendarian, or the history of your activities, you would find very little to differentiate yourself from a god, I can assure you of that as well.”
I pointed a finger at him. “You’re trying to appeal to my reasonability,” I said. “You’re trying to humanize yourself - to demythologize yourself - so that I’ll agree to do whatever it is you’re leading up to. You want me to think I’m not being intimidated into it. You want me to feel comfortable I’m making a decision as one peer to another instead of being stampeded into something I’ve got no choice about anyway. Why? Why are you bothering? Because of Iskendarian’s power?”
“Would you believe me if I said I wanted to be your friend?” Gash asked. “Of course not. Power obviously has a major role in everything that is happening, but raw power is scarcely the whole story. Fortunately it rarely is. At the -”
“Then why be a god if not for the power?”
“There’s power and there’s power. At the moment, as I was saying, the issue is the power of persuasiveness; in a word, politics. With the matter of Abdication versus Conservation looking to come to a resolution once and for all, things are very tentatively balanced. It may not be a great exaggeration to say the world of affairs is poised on the edge of chaos. Slightly different perturbations may send matters off on wildly different trajectories. “
“Wait a minute. Weren’t you the one who just masterminded that little eradication of Soaf Pasook down in Oolsmouth? And what about trapping what’s-his-name in the ring? Pod Dall? Wasn’t he supposedly the moderating influence in god-to-god affairs? If you’re worried about chaos, well, weren’t you responsible for setting up the situation in the first place? And don’t tell me there’s chaos and there’s chaos.”
Gash closed his mouth and fixed me with an exasperated glare, implying that he might have been preparing to issue just such a pronouncement. “The situation is much different now than it was a few weeks ago in Roosing Oolvaya, or even in Oolsmouth. Who knew that so many gods would fly at each other’s throats? Who would have expected that so many independent plots would reach their inflection points at so close to the same time? And your friends, Karlini and Maximillian - what were they working on in that laboratory we just left?”
“I’m not exactly sure,” I said. “The second quantum level, I think, and something having to do with microscopic animalcules.”
He gestured with a waving hand. “You see? If they had been successful, Maximillian would have either used this to jack up his own power and challenge us directly, or would have set it loose into the public domain, which would have been worse. With generalized second quantum level direct access anyone could have wielded the power of gods. It’s possible civilization or even life on the planet might not have survived that exercise.”
Why did I even feel like I might know what he was talking about? “But you think things are still that unstable even though the Karlini lab burned itself to ash?”
“Yes and no,” Gash said. “The building didn’t burn itself to ash, now did it?”
I didn’t like where this was leading. My alter ego was the one who’d destroyed the lab, and I was sure he hadn’t done it with an eye toward helping the world. Whatever they’d been working on in that laboratory was not unfamiliar to Iskendarian; the Karlini gang even had his notes on hand with them. Iskendarian had wanted his papers back and at least he hadn’t gotten them - as far as I knew they’d gone to embers along with everything else in the place. But how much could he do on his unaugmented own?