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.
“Those of us trying to inhibit the conflict,” he went on, “have taken the names Akhitai and Akashel. Akhitai is the word for ‘man’ in one of the multiversal languages. Akashel means ‘woman.’ The Akashel believe the conflict can best be resolved by the elimination of Ishas. We believe the opposite. Though Ishas are relentless in their pursuit, rarely do they perceive Ariel as a threat. Their attitudes are colored by affection. Though Ariels are generally considered the more gentle and nurturing, fear motivates them to use deadly force far more often than is the case with Ishas. If a deadly weapon had fallen to your wife’s hand during her moment of fear, when she recognized on a subconscious level that you were a mortal enemy, she would have killed you. It’s possible her original mission was to kill you…you specifically. That she was traveling to California to meet you and not the Isha with whom you fought.”
I was incredulous. “You’re saying it’s just her and me? We’re the ones causing all the damage?”
“I’m sorry, but…yes.”
“That’s crazy!”
“It is as it is,” said Rahul.
“If it’s true, why not send operatives to kill us all?”
“How many operatives should we send? Millions? There are at least that number of trans-multiversal Ishas and Ariels. So many more journeys might destroy the Weave. A few of us make journeys by necessity, but it’s safer to train Ishas and Ariels to kill one another. The method’s not terribly efficient, I’m afraid. We’re spread too thin. We don’t have the resources we need and so we make mistakes…like the one we apparently made with you.” He brushed aside a forelock. “There’s another figure in the dance, of course. Me. Every outpost of the Akashel and the Akhitai is manned by at least one of my analogues. I’m in conflict with myself.” He gave a disconsolate laugh. “The three of us make a curious trinity.”
I wanted to reject his words, but everything he said seemed to connect with a truth I carried inside me. Though it was difficult to think of myself and Ariel as a host of sexually deranged termites eating holes in the multiversal equilibrium, once that image had been invoked, it was impossible to erase. Rahul enumerated my choices. I could return to my life and stay away from women named Ariel…but it was probable that an Ariel programmed to kill Ishas would seek me out. I could let them train me and become a predator whose prey was the woman I loved in all her incarnations. Or I could go my own way, take one of the vehicles they had acquired and pursue Ariel for my own reasons. Rahul recommended Number Two. My feelings for him had dwindled—he seemed imbued with the horrifying impersonality of our enfolding circumstance—and I locked him in with Siskin and the others. Thereafter I strolled about the circular room, studying the infinite variety of my lover’s faces, finding no better answers there.
There was a fourth choice, one that Rahul had not mentioned, and during the hours of the night I contemplated self-destruction; but as I have stated, I am a hero in only the structural sense of the term. My life is precious to me and the portrait painted by Rahul of the damage my analogues had wrought—universes destroyed, an unimaginable apocalypse looming—made it no less precious. Hungry, I found a kitchen adjoining the circular room and fixed a chicken sandwich and drank an entire pot of coffee. After eating I stretched out on a stainless steel prep table to rest and remembered something Rahul had said years before. We had been talking about the fragility of the human body, how the slightest chemical imbalance, one milli-fraction less of a compound, could result in death, and he suggested the universe itself was endowed with a similar fragility. “Everything is in balance,” he said. “A nudge from the perfect angle and it would all topple.” It appeared in this he had essentially been correct.
Wired on stress and caffeine, I closed my eyes and was possessed by fragments of thought, fleeting images, memories, all relating to Ariel. Obsessed to the point of insanity. I would not have believed that I could be so described, yet I had snuffed twelve men without much in the way of a reaction and I had been planning without regard for human consequence to destroy the project and all in it with the remaining cylinders. Such indifference surely qualified as insanity. I had a waking dream in which I traveled to a distant place and sought out Ariel, convinced her of my loyalty, and together we spread an evangel of love throughout the multiverse, healing the breach between all Ishas and Ariels. Even in my disturbed state I knew this to be insane. I would never be able to look at Ariel again without feeling wary, mistrustful. I hatched a dozen plans, none of them practical. Of one thing I was certain—I could not return to my life. With suicide off the board, I was left with two choices: search for Ariel with my own interests in mind or come seething out of nowhere, a monstrous anomaly like Springheel Jack, to hunt her and her kind. The choices were much the same. Better said, I really had one choice. And no matter what I intended, I hadn’t the slightest notion of how I might act if I saw Ariel again. I believed more firmly than ever that the Willowy Woman had chosen forgetfulness over duty, because that was what I most desired for myself—to forget everything, to be ignorant and open to hope, unaware of the universe being eaten away beneath my feet and of my role in the process.
I jumped down from the table and went to explore the basements of the project. I told myself I was looking for one of the Akashel vehicles, but what I was truly looking for was a reason to act in some direction. Two levels below the kitchen I came upon a room containing five of the vehicles. Farther along was a room with a window in which a woman sat on the floor, her chin resting on her drawn-up knees. She was facing away from me, clad in a gray jumpsuit, her black hair short and neatly trimmed; but even before she stood and approached the window, I knew she was Ariel. Not my Ariel, but mine all the same. She greatly resembled the Willowy Woman. Tall and slender, with sharply angled eyebrows and that streamlined, too-simple beauty. Judging by her well-kept hair, I might have assumed that she’d been captured recently; but it was as likely that they had been studying her, caring for her, watching her change from a spindly, hissing creature, growing smaller, curvier, emptier. The window must have been a two-way mirror. It was clear she could not see me, but she was aware of me—that, too, was clear. She laid her palm on the glass and tilted her head, trying to find me behind her reflection. All I had felt on meeting the Willowy Woman years before was restored to me. Curiosity. Wonder. But these feelings were pushed to the side by the stronger emotions I had known in New York and California, and despite the bizarre condition that joined us, it seemed natural that I felt this way. I must have tried twenty keys before I hit upon the one that fit the lock. I opened the door and stepped back, uncertain whether she would know me; and if she did know me, how could I trust that her knowledge was not married to homicidal intent?