Kalki, Part I

First look at a new novel

The murder on television was the most dramatic event in the history of that medium. The Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King, Jr., had been killed offscreen. Although Oswald had been satisfactorily murdered onscreen, he was not at the time a star, or even a featured player. On the other hand, Kalki was already god to millions of people. To those other millions who rejected him as god, he was undeniably that most eminent of all creatures in the last days of the age of Kali, a superstar.

The explosion that disintegrated horse and rider was immediately blamed on Professor Jossi and his atom smasher. Jossi met with the press. He filled an entire blackboard with diagrams, proving that his machine could not have done the slightest harm to anyone. This explanation was accepted because Jossi's demonstration in applied physics was not understood. I confess (now) that at first I, too, blamed him. But we were all of us wrong.

I have now forgotten at what point we all became convinced that Jason McCloud was the murderer. Fairly soon, I should think. Giles assured us that McCloud had been acting on orders not from the Drug Enforcement Administration but from the Chiu Chow Society of Hong Kong, his principal employer. McCloud was a triple agent. As a bona fide agent for the DEA, he had infiltrated Kalki Enterprises and Giles had been obliged to pay him a "consultancy fee." McCloud had also infiltrated the Chiu Chow Society. When he learned that they had taken out a contract on Kalki's life with the Triad, he convinced them to let him do the job. They were delighted. Who would dare accuse an American narc of such a highly visible murder? To this day, no one knows just how McCloud set off his bomb, but we know that he did. At no point was he suspected by the newspapers, which were rife with speculation.

Two days after the murder, Giles gave a press conference aboard the Narayana. Geraldine and Iwere the only other Perfect Masters present. Lakshmi was under sedation in another part of the ship. I wore a black dress. I had had my hair done that morning. Did not mind too much the photographers.

I will confess to this record that I had had a suspicion or two that Giles might have wanted Kalki out of the way. Suspicions that were soon dispelled. For one thing, Giles had no real motive. After all, he and Kalki had been equal partners in the drug syndicate. They needed each other. Giles had nothing to gain by Kalki's death and a good deal to lose. In the hot glare of the television lights, Giles looked remarkably unhealthy, even for him. I also noticed that Geraldine's eyes were red. Yes, she had been in love with Kalki, I decided. Had I? In a way. And what else is there when it comes to love but a way to be in or out of it, including no way?

Now Giles stood up on a chair. "I have," he announced in a strained voice, "a statement to make." The salon was quiet, except for the hum of the cameras. Giles began to read from a piece of paper. "Kalki lives." Giles paused. Defiantly? Yes, I suppose so. The immediate reaction was amazement. Then there were a number of snickers. Media personages were not precisely amiable.

Giles's annoyance was plain. Anger gave urgency to his voice. "Kalki lives," he repeated. "Vishnu lives. All that died in Madison Square Garden was one of the four billion human bodies currently crowding the planet. As predicted, Kalki was obliged to discard one of those bodies. Presently, Kalki will inhabit a new body. He will return to us and, as predicted, he will end the age of Kali on April third."

The boldness of these statements produced, first, a deep silence. Then someone gave a nervous laugh.

Finally, a journalist asked the obvious--if slightly deranged under the circumstances--question. "Where is he now, Dr. Lowell?"

"Kalki is Vishnu. Vishnu is the universe. Therefore, Kalki is everywhere and nowhere." I groaned to myself. This rigmarole always depressed me. Others, too.

"I meant, Dr. Lowell," said the inquiring reporter, "where exactly is this spirit that you say is going to reinhabit some other body between now and April third?"

"I've just told you." There was a definite snap in Giles's voice. "The spirit is everywhere."

"In that case," a lady asked, "could you tell us, then, where the body is that he is going to occupy? And who does it belong to now?"

This struck me as a good question.

"I don't know." Giles was curt.

"Then could you maybe explain to us what will happen to the present tenant of the body when Kalki takes over?" The questioner was a syndicated columnist, known for his unready wit. Everyone laughed, except Geraldine, who looked furious, red hair bristling.

"Since Vishnu is already present in that body, as he is present in me and in you and in all things, there should be no dislocation." When Giles became unusually precise, it was a sure sign that he was getting angry.

"Why did Kalki leave the old body?"

"Because, dear lady," Giles was now pouring out his special organic honey with unstudied ease, "a person or persons unknown saw fit to throw an as-yet-unidentified explosive at the old body, totally disintegrating it. The god Vishnu, of course, continues to exist in the various bits of the old body that were so criminally and so savagely scattered around Madison Square Garden. Presently, he will either reassemble those fragments and appear amongst us as he was or he will select an altogether new body in which to reappear. We shall just have to wait and see."

"This is all very fanciful, Dr. Lowell," said a tough Barbara Walters type. "But what I don't understand is why Kalki or Vishnu or whoever would allow somebody to blow him up like that, anyway."

"Karma, dear lady. Fate. Destiny. It was meant to be and so it was."

"So Kalki knew he was going to be blown up on the TV?"

"Vishnu knows what was, what is and what will be."

"But did Kalki tell you in advance that he expected to be blown up on the TV?"

"Yes, he did. He predicted everything."

This had the desired effect. News was now being made. Everyone shouted at once. When did Kalki know? What did he say? One reporter asked, "Did Kalki tell you why he was going to let this happen to him?"

"I am so glad that you asked that." Glowing with sweat from the TV lights, Giles looked almost healthy. Everyone leaned forward to hear what he would say. "To begin with," he began, "we are all of us involved in a most intricate ceremony. Think of the end of this cycle of creation as a sort of dance. Indeed, there is a legend that the end will come when Siva begins the Tandava, or dance of eternity. For Siva is also known to the gods as Nataraja, the king of dance."

Giles explained that Siva was one of the three aspects of the single god. For some reason, the Christians in the salon found this difficult to understand, even though their own religion involved an equally tripartite or trilateral god. Mary Baker Eddy, bless her, never went in for this kind of nonsense. It was enough that she herself had three names.

"So let me return, if I may, to the image of the dance." Giles was in full stride or gallop now. "Kalki appears. Makes a gesture. Disappears. Reappears. Is transformed. Moves to left, to right. All the while, we watch him. All the while, he watches us. Now I must give you a most solemn warning. Those who believe that Kalki ceased to exist in Madison Square Garden are doomed never to achieve nirvana. Those who have faith in Kalki's return will know paradise, and soon."

Giles had a lot of guts, if nothing else. To unreel that sort of line to the press was asking for it. And there was a lot of it. The black lady from The Village Voice spoke: "You said a while back that April third is the new date for the end of the world, is that right?" Journalists always like to answer the question that they have asked on the ground that it might turn an essentially one-way street into a thoroughfare. As Giles reaffirmed the date, I motioned to Geraldine. We left together, unnoticed by the crowd. They reminded me of a pack of wolves ... of the sort that Arlene so much enjoyed rooting for in those television documentaries. Giles was plainly wolves' dinner.

Geraldine and I walked back to the Americana Hotel. She was tense, guarded. She agreed with me that McCloud was the murderer. "But he's safe. They'll never catch him ... in time."

On Lexington Avenue, we watched a group of Kalki boys and girls. They offered their literature, as politely as always. But no one took the pamphlets. Even the white-paper lotuses were refused. The mood had changed overnight.

"It's all over," said Geraldine. She seemed sad.

"Isn't Kalki returning?" I probed.

"Yes." Geraldine was brisk. "But, even so, this phase is over." She made a funny sort of pushing-to-one-side gesture. "They're all excluded now."

"Who's excluded?"

"Everyone on earth except----" Geraldine stopped. She did not look at me. We crossed Park Avenue. The wind was cold, from the northwest.

"Except the mandalas?" I asked.

"Except the ones who believe."

"And you're doubtful about me?"

"I don't know. Everyone seems to have given up." For a moment, we lingered in the bare garden of Lever House. Geraldine told me that most of the devoted mandalas had defected. Some had been frightened. They had thought that whoever had murdered Kalki might want to make a clean sweep of his followers. Some feared that the American Government might find it irresistible to behave illegally and arrest or deport them. Some had just lost faith. "It's really only us now. Lakshmi and Giles and me and----"

"Well," I said quickly, "I'm still available. I mean, I'm still under contract, am I not?"

What did I believe as of March 18? I must be absolutely honest. I thought that Kalki was doornail dead. But I assumed (continued on page 106)Kalki(continued from page 96) that Giles would come up with some sort of substitute. Yet even if he did, the game was over. April third would come and go.

Geraldine was grateful for my display, if not of loyalty, of solidarity. When I asked about Lakshmi, she said, "No one has seen her except Giles."

"But she must have known." I played along. "I mean, if Kalki predicted this would happen...."

"It's still a shock," said Geraldine, matter-of-fact as always. I could not fathom her. Or any of them. I was genuinely sad that the beautiful construct of flesh that had been J. J. Kelly was no longer in its original blond arrangement and I felt emptiness.

There were a number of messages for me at the hotel. One from Senator Johnson White. He wanted to meet me the following day at the Plaza hotel.

•

Senator White was installed in a corner suite. From tall windows, there was a fine view of Central Park. Although flowers from admirers decorated every table of the sitting room, I looked in vain for the symbolic poppy.

"You wanted to see me, Senator."

"Yes." White put on his solemn State of the Union face. He looked historic. Mount Rushmore in rosy soap. "As a good American, Teddy, I want you to testify before my committee on April fourth. Naturally, you'll want to be briefed on exactly what to say, which is why I have proposed this little get-together with me and the man from the CIA. But first, Teddy, what do you think happened at Madison Square Garden?"

Under the circumstances, I thought this an odd question. So I gave him an odd answer. "Well, for one thing, Kalki filled the Garden. And you said he wouldn't."

"There was a lot of paper." White lapsed into show-business lingo. Paper meant those free tickets that are given out in order to make it look as if there were a full house.

"There was no paper. The house," I showbizzed, too, "went clean."

"Be that," said White snippily, "as it may. What exactly happened at the end?"

"Kalki was murdered." I decided to follow the party, or Giles Lowell, line. "As he expected to be."

"Did Kalki ever tell you that he expected to be murdered?"

"In a way, yes." Since I was in the dark, I saw no reason not to share my darkness with White. It was unlikely that he knew anything I did not.

White scratched his head in such a way that the cowlick in the back stood straight up. He looked a country slicker. "Well, now, I'm just a boy from up the creek a ways, and what I don't ... dohn unnerstan' is jest who in tarnation lobbed that big ole bomb at Jim Kelly and his real nice white horse?"

I gritted my teeth. White's voice was like a plate of cold okra. I hate okra of any kind. I answered noncommittally. "The FBI is supposed to be investigating."

"They're hopeless." White dropped the accent. "They aren't even sure what kind of explosive was used. Or where it came from. Or who threw it, assuming it was not already in place, with a timer attached. Anyhoo, that ain't no concern of us'n." Into a frying pan filled with lard went the okra. "Now, ole buddy, I got me a theory. And it is this: Dr. Giles Lowell set that bomb."

"Why?"

" 'Cause he wants to take over the Mob."

"I don't buy that, Senator!"

"Well, I'm a-peddlin', ole buddy."

I broke down. I swept frying pan and okra to the ground, metaphorically speaking. "Please, Senator. Don't talk Southern to me. I mean, it's bad enough listening to the President and his wife and his brother and his sisters and his sons and their wives and his aides and his truly dreadful mother without having you, the white hope of the Republican Party and, I pray, our next President, coming on like Li'l Abner when what this country of ours needs is Honest Abe." I laid it on.

White surrendered. He flashed a winner's smile. "Lordy!" he said. Then he stopped himself in time. "I guess it's contagious, that truly awful accent we hear morning, noon and night in Washington. Anyways ... I mean, anyway, I always knew you would end up in my corner, if only because fiscal responsibility is my watchword. Teddy, I want you to testify that during the period of your employment as Kalki's personal pilot, he told you on more than one occasion that, A, he was the actual head of this great narcotics ring and, B, that he feared Dr. Lowell would knock him off and take his place."

"Senator, you're asking me to commit perjury before a Senate committee."

"I'm asking you, Teddy, to tell the truth, and nothing but the truth." White's contact lenses reflected, disagreeably, my anxious face.

"The truth is," I said, "Kalki never said either A or B to me."

"I think, Teddy, that you are showing signs of being an uncooperative witness." Capped teeth were bared. "And I think you know what happens to uncooperative witnesses who are in contempt of Congress."

I was ready to kick that one around. But we were interrupted by his secretary, who poked his head in the doorway and announced, "He's here."

In retrospect, where I seem now to be in happy residence, I am not as surprised as I was then to see Dr. Ashok. Although I never found Giles's Dr. Ashok number as convincing as Dr. Ashok's Dr. Lowell routine, I had to admit that he was in good form that day with Senator White. But then, he had to be. As Giles Lowell, he had been subpoenaed. With the greatest of ease, he could have ended up in the clink. It took a lot of guts to enter the lion's den, beard in hand, as it were. I remember wondering whether or not White knew that Dr. Ashok was Dr. Lowell.

"My dear Senator! What a pleasure! And dear Madam Ottinger, my Katmandu pal! Put it there!" Golden eyes and teeth shining, Dr. Ashok gave me a fragile brown hand to shake. He even smelled of curry powder. A true artist.

"Dr. Ashok, we need your counsel," said White, putting his tiny feet on the coffee table.

"I am yours to command, like the genie in the lamp. Simply rub, O Aladdin! And you will get your wish." I always thought that Giles tended to overdo Dr. Ashok in a way that Dr. Ashok never overdid Dr. Lowell. But if White was not in cahoots with Giles, he was plainly taken in.

"What are they saying at CIA headquarters?"

"Langley is more than usually confused." Dr. Ashok patted my knee. I moved my chair away.

"Dr. Ashok, I may as well jump in with both feet," said White, adjusting a contact lens. "In the course of my committee hearings, I am going to expose the murderer of Kalki. In order for me to do this, I must hold off the CIA, the FBI, New York's finest ... in short, anyone who might solve the murder before I do. So, Dr. Ashok, can you keep the lid on at Langley?"

"Dear Senator White, you have, I fear, overestimated my humble intelligence. Before I can begin to keep a lid of any sort in its appointed place, I must know--oh, superb simile or even metaphor!--what precisely do you have in your pot?"

"Kalki's murderer is in my pot."

"His name, dear Senator White?"

"Giles Lowell, M.D."

Dr. Ashok rose, quietly, to greatness. "I take it, then, that you have in your (continued on page 156)Kalki(continued from page 106) possession absolute proof that the unsavory Dr. Lowell murdered his partner in crime?"

"I have the proof."

"In what form?"

"That is for my committee to decide. But since we know in advance the murderer's identity, we should have no problem in constructing the case against him. Particularly with your help, Dr. Ashok. Yours, too, Teddy...."

"No dice!" I had decided that this was a matter best left unminced. "I don't hold any brief for Dr. Lowell, but...."

"A truly evil man." Dr. Ashok spoke with absolute conviction.

"With Kalki out of the way, Dr. Lowell would control the largest narcotics ring in the world. Right, Dr. Ashok?" Senator White asked.

"Right, Senator White." Dr. Ashok poured his characteristic honey over the statesman. "I shall do my best to defuse Langley. Meanwhile, I am certain that Madam Ottinger will tell your committee how, on more than one occasion, Kalki told her that he feared Dr. Lowell would one day kill him."

"But----" I started. Then stopped. After all, Dr. Lowell as Dr. Ashok or Dr. Ashok as Dr. Lowell was in charge. This was his show, not mine.

"Agreed?" Dr. Ashok gave me a yellowy smile.

I took a long leap in the dark. "What about Jason McCloud?"

White was suddenly tense. "What about him?"

"I think he was in on it. I was watching him just before the bomb went off. He was scared to death."

"But, my dear Madam Ottinger, what would his motive be?" Dr. Ashok was silken. "The Drug Enforcement Administration has only one objective, and I believe that Senator White, unofficially, at least, will bear me out. The single, nay, unique objective of the DEA is the increased sale of every kind of drug all over the world."

"Quite true." White was equally to the point. "Without enterprises like Kalki's, the bureau would wither away, as would my committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control, with its very rich funding by the Congress. McCloud had absolutely no motive for killing Kalki."

"He was on Dr. Lowell's payroll when he was in New Orleans."

"Dear Madam Ottinger." Dr. Ashok laughed, as if someone had described to him what laughter was but then had forgotten to give him an actual demonstration. "Of course, McCloud was on Dr. Lowell's payroll. After all, McCloud is a narc. But doesn't that fact prove that he would not kill Kalki? Geese that lay golden eggs are sacred to those who lust for gilded omelets."

I let it go. I realized that I was in the presence of two great Americans contemplating crimes against the state.

Dr. Ashok and I got ready to leave. We shook hands all around.

As Giles and I walked down Seventh Avenue, I said, "I didn't know you were still doing your Dr. Ashok routine."

"I have no choice." Giles went right on sounding like Dr. Ashok. The winds of March were cold, and full of town newspapers and dust. "I'm obliged to keep the better part of one foot in the enemy camp."

"But who's the enemy, Giles? I've never been able to figure that one out."

Giles gave me a sidelong Ashokian glance. "You are a slyboots, Teddy! But then, still waters run deep. Except, of course, to be precise, still waters don't run at all. I have never ceased to be Dr. Ashok, on special assignment with the CIA. At the moment, it is wise for Dr. Ashok to surface and Dr. Lowell to submerge."

We paused as an elderly white man with a baseball bat chased a young black man out of an adult bookstore. As the colorful pair vanished into a side street, I said to Giles, "Now that you're the head of Kalki Enterprises, I want you to know that I'm willing to honor my contract, if, of course, it has not been abrogated by events."

"My dear Teddy, you are employed, as agreed, until April third." Giles reached into Dr. Ashok's pocket and took out a checkbook. Standing in front of the dirty window of an Orange Julius shop, he wrote me out a check for two months' salary.

"Thanks." I put the check in my pocket. "And after April third?"

"Before that day, Kalki will have returned. On that day, the age of Kali will end. Look! A kosher hot dog! I cannot resist." We ate garlicky hot dogs at a dirty counter.

"What form is Kalki going to take?"

"His own. What else? Attended by the Perfect Masters, he will--what is your American phrase?--do most beautifully and terribly and finally his thing."

"Then they," I said, pointing at the people coming and going, "will all die."

"Peaceful thought, isn't it? No more pollution. No more hideous cities, slums, people. No more television. Yes, Teddy, Walter Cronkite, Hollywood Squares, The Gong Show, all will be as one with Nineveh and Tyre."

When we reached the Narayana, we found that security was almost as tight as it had been before the murder in Madison Square Garden. In addition to the ship's own guards, a number of plain-clothesmen lurked about the dock, spying. There were times when it seemed that the principal function of the American Government in the age of Kali was to spy on its citizens.

Lakshmi and Geraldine were in the main salon, getting drunk on bloody marys. I was about to advise them on the dangers of drink in the middle of the day. But I lost heart. They had been through a lot.

"Teddy!" Geraldine appeared genuinely happy to see me.

So was Lakshmi. "I knew you'd be loyal." She embraced me.

"Teddy Ottinger is a radiant Perfect Master and an inspiration to the rest of us." With that testimonial, Giles took off his white wig, poured vodka on a cocktail napkin and rubbed the make-up from his face. Then, restored to Lowelldom, he announced, "It is time."

"Yes," said Lakshmi. She was a bit unsteady on her feet until Geraldine took her arm. In their flowing saris, the girls swayed, as if in a summer wind. They looked happy, and I wondered why. The vodka?

Kalki entered the salon. The three other Perfect Masters fell flat on their faces. Not wanting to let down the team, I did the same. I had decided that I was caught in a dream. There was no other way of explaining the figure in the doorway. Or, put another way, if this was not a dream, it was a ghost; and I did not believe in ghosts.

"Namah Shivaya!" The three chanted in unison five syllables that meant nothing to me.

Kalki came toward us. Face like a mask of hammered gold. Voice purest bronze. "I am Siva," said the voice. "The destroyer."

"Namah Shivaya," chanted the others.

Namah Shivaya is Sanskrit for "I bow to Siva."

•

As Siva, the annihilator of worlds, Kalki was quite unlike his earlier self. The blondness had congealed. He was ice-cold. I thought of glaciers, sliding south.

Kalki sat down. I did not. I just stared at him, mouth no doubt ajar. Do I wake or sleep? I asked myself. I recall thinking that if this was really a dream, the details had been nicely laid on. Dream scenes (continued on page 189)Kalki(continued from page 156) usually lack proper ceilings or convincing vistas through open windows. But there was a ceiling to the room. And the skyline of New York harbor could be seen through open windows. If this was a dream, it had been meticulously constructed.

Kalki looked up at me. The eyes were his eyes, no doubt of that. But now they were sapphire hard. "You are with me." This was a statement.

I mumbled something idiotic, to the effect that our contract had never lapsed.

"You'll be doing some flying soon." Kalki made a second statement. I was now certain that I was awake. And was more than ever confused.

As usual, Giles was the explainer. "Dear Teddy, I can see that you are puzzled."

"Poor thing!" Lakshmi was compassionate. "Tell her what happened, Giles."

"Gladly!" Giles was in his element, a substance identical with hyperhyperbole. "On the evening of March fifteenth, there existed two versions of James J. Kelly's handsome body. One was, alas, destroyed by the villainous McCloud, hit man, narc, political dreamer. Happily, we still retain our precious reserve model, and there he sits."

Giles always knew how to annoy me. Even at world's end, he was able to get a rise out of me. I rose, to object. "You can't have two copies of the same person."

"The images of Vishnu are endless," began Giles.

I headed him off with Ottingerian logic. "Check one of two, Giles. Either this is Kalki and someone else was killed or Kalki was killed and this is someone else."

"Check one, Teddy." Geraldine was pleased with my sharpness.

Lakshmi smiled her special queen-of-heaven smile. "This is really and truly our Kalki. The original. Safe and sound."

"Then who was killed?" I asked.

"A double," said Geraldine. "You see, we've known all along that someone, probably McCloud, would try to kill Kalki...."

"You knew all along?" Kalki had only spoken of a possible attempt on his life.

Geraldine nodded. "Four of the Five Perfect Masters knew."

"So why didn't you tell the fifth?"

"You were being tested, dear Teddy." Giles produced a twinkle. "In the crucible, as it were, and with flying colors, you have passed, to mix gorgeously a metaphor."

"So who was killed?"

"An actor named Rod Spenser."

"By McCloud?"

"Yes." Giles did not, for once, so much as produce a bush that he could beat about.

"But didn't he have a family? And won't they or his friends or his agent know that he's missing? And then won't someone figure out that he was the one who was killed and not Kalki?"

"Dear Teddy, don't be such a worrywart!" Giles was teasing, which always made me nervous.

But Lakshmi was soothing and to the point. "On April third, all of Rod Spenser's family, friends, associates will join him in ... the next phase."

"And you will see it all, Teddy." Geraldine sounded excited. "The Five Perfect Masters will preside at The End."

"So what," I asked, "are we to do?"

"Fly." Kalki had returned to his body. He turned to me, and for the first time, he resembled his pre-Siva self. And I was now certain that the man I was talking to was really Kalki and not a double. I was relieved. A succession of Kalkis would have been intolerable. "You will fly the Garuda around the world at the equator. Then you will fly the Garuda around the world over the two poles. You will be my messenger."

"What is the message?"

"The fact of the flight."

"An itinerary is being prepared." Giles sounded businesslike. "You will have a full 707 crew...."

As I was about to ask when I was to leave, Arlene Wagstaff entered the salon. She was made up for television and sober as a judge.

Kalki rose to greet Arlene. When she saw him, she gave a funny little gasp, not unlike the one she did so effectively in her nasal-decongestant commercial. "Sweet Jesus, you're not dead! Oh, but I knew it all along! I mean, that was a special-effect trick back there in the Garden, wasn't it? Sure it was. You were putting us on. For the ratings. They went through the roof, too! Well, let me tell you, I am absolutely and totally your greatest fan. Teddy, didn't I always say Kalki is a pussycat?"

Kalki had taken both of her hands in his. He radiated pre-Siva charm. "I'm your admirer, Arlene. But then, so is everyone else. I'm glad you could come."

Arlene gave me a quick peck, and a slow explanation. "Angel, I was flabbergasted when I got this call from my agent, saying would I sky into Gotham and tape an interview about Kalki, because the Kalki people wanted somebody the public loves and trusts, like me. My God, I'm thirsty. But no drinkee before telly, that's my cardinal rule. Anyway, I said, what's there to say? Wasn't Kalki blown to bits before our very eyes on prime time? Who are you trying to kid? Not that I really believed anything serious had happened to you!" Arlene put her arm through Kalki's. "He's cuter in person!" She winked at me. She turned to Kalki. "It was a special effect, wasn't it? Like in The Towering Inferno?"

Kalki smiled, said nothing.

"What's happening?" I asked Geraldine, in a low voice. But not so low that Arlene's sharp ears did not detect a special relationship.

"This way," said Kalki. He put an arm around Arlene's waist. She was ecstatic.

Geraldine answered me, "What is happening is now happening. Kalki is going to make a tape for television with your friend."

Together we went down a long corridor. Deep inside the ship, a stateroom had been converted to a television studio. Technical crew and director were already on hand.

Kalki sat cross-legged on a dais. Arlene sat in a chair beside him. Kalki whispered instructions to her. Arlene moistened her lips. She was a quick study. At a gesture from Kalki, the taping began.

Arlene looked at Kalki, with true and unfeigned adoration. It was clever of whoever it was (Giles?) to select Arlene as an interviewer. Aside from being my friend, she plainly adored Kalki. She was also the greatest pitchperson on television.

"Kalki. You ... have ... returned ... from the dead!" Arlene's voice was reverent.

"I am eternal." Kalki glittered like those northern lights you can see at 40,000 feet, flaring onto the arctic horizon. "I cannot die. I alone was before all things. I alone shall always be."

"That's very interesting." Gamely, Arlene gave the conversation ball a push. "Were you surprised at what happened to you the other night in Madison Square Garden?"

"I know all things that have been, that are, that will be. I knew that I would drop one human body and take up another. This one that you see."

"Which looks very nice to me from where I am sitting." Arlene gave me her contented, maternal glance, the one that she had brought to perfection in that commercial where the preferred detergent cleans in one second flat the children's muddy clothes. "Now, then, Kalki, what you've done by ... well, coming back from the dead is something of a miracle to us civilians, both in and out of show business."

"I was never dead."

"Yes," said Arlene, not listening. "I know. But now that you have come back to us like this, what are your immediate plans, if I may ask?"

"I am Siva."

Arlene had not been briefed on Siva. I could tell that she was thrown. But she covered up expertly. She had been doing this sort of thing for half a century. "That's interesting. About your being, uh, Siva. Could you tell our audience a little bit about who Siva is? And who you are, really? Like where you were born, originally?"

But Kalki was now in full flow. He described Siva as he had described him to me that day in Central Park. Then he announced that at noon, Eastern standard time, April third, Siva would begin the dance of eternity and all human life would end. As usual, Kalki was his most effective when he was most matter-of-fact.

"That is not really a very upbeat sort of message." Arlene rallied as best she could.

"But death--Yama, as we call it--is peace, and peace is the ultimate blessing."

"But what about a message of hope for all of your many fans out there? For those of us who were rooting for you at Madison Square Garden and who are all pleased as punch that you weren't really killed but are back in the saddle again as, uh, Siva."

"A message of hope?" Kalki smiled a most boyish and un-Siva smile. "All right. People of the world, enjoy yourselves. Don't worry about the future. There will be no future. Delight in this world. Delight in each day. Delight in one another. Those of you who believe in me will continue forever, but in different forms.

"So take this earth. It is yours. Until I begin the dance of eternity and all the stars go out."

•

Since the networks refused to telecast the Kalki--Arlene Wagstaff interview, Giles was obliged to buy 30 minutes of prime-time television.

The day of the telecast, Senator White arrived in New York, subcommittee in tow. From the committee's quarters at the Waldorf Astoria, White announced, "Special hearings will be held here in New York, a great city that can always depend upon my support, financially and otherwise, in the exciting years to come. Working together for fiscal responsibility, we can and we will put the Big back into the Big Apple. In the next few days, my committee will be investigating the alleged connection between a certain alleged religious movement and an international drug ring. Our first witness will be James J. Kelly, also known as Kalki." Senator White was able to get this message (and himself) onto the six-o'clock news.

Although White made the next day's headlines, he was upstaged. The subpoena that had been prepared for Kalki was not served, because Kalki had disappeared. The Narayana was searched from stem to stern. Kalki was gone. In fact, all the Perfect Masters had vanished except for me. Luckily, the committee did not know that I was a Perfect Master. Nevertheless, as Kalki's pilot, I was questioned by an investigator who found it hard to believe that I had no idea where anyone was. The committee was fit to be tied.

The telecast rang up a Nielsen rating of 46.7. This is the sort of rating that the Super Bowl gets. Or so the experts said. I still have no idea what sport it was that they played in the Super Bowl. My editor at Doubleday said that if the program had not been prerecorded, the ratings might have been the highest in history, because everyone would be watching in order to see whether or not Kalki got himself killed again. As it was, people were eager to see if this Kalki was the same as the one that they saw killed at the Garden. If not, was the new Kalki a convincing double? Or on the order of that perennial phenomenon of those years of the new Nixon?

The next day, it was generally agreed that what had been revealed was, indeed, the original Kalki, which led to a good deal of wild speculation. Many pundits thought that the Kalki-Wagstaff interview had been taped before Madison Square Garden. Others thought that the murder at the Garden had been no murder at all but some sort of stunt, to increase interest in Kalki. White's subpoena did not exactly diminish interest in Kalki.

Dr. Ashok and I met at Grand Central Station after the program. He carried a briefcase. I noticed that not only was his wig on straight but his performance was less surreal than usual. In fact, he was nervous.

"Have you been served with a subpoena yet?"

"Not yet."

"Good. Don't go back to the hotel. You can pick up what clothes you need right now. Then go to Kennedy Airport. The Garuda is ready for take-off. The crew is on stand-by. The cargo is aboard. And here is your flight plan."

I took the briefcase. "Where is Kalki?"

"Out of sight if not out of mind, or, as the Bawd of----"

I cut him short. "What," I asked, "is the cargo?"

"Read your instructions."

A well-dressed black man entered a telephone booth just back of us and began to urinate. Drunk, he had thought that he had already made it to the men's room. No one paid the slightest attention to him. Dr. Ashok and I moved out of range.

"Your trip is essentially a gesture, a symbol of Vishnu's power." Neither Dr. Ashok nor I could keep from staring at the telephone booth from which came the sound of water, rather like that made by Niagara Falls in Arlene's Sada Soda Water commercial. A slow flood began to spread out onto the cement floor.

"Your flight plan divides the planet into quadrants. You will go once around the world at the two poles. En route, the plane will, at specified intervals, drop its cargo...."

"Of what?"

"Lotuses. The symbol of immortality. Of Vishnu, the all-pervading. Of Siva, and his love."

"That's quite a lot of lotuses."

"Seventy million. There is going to be a superlottery. Thousands and thousands of winners of jumbo cash prizes, or, as the author of the Old Testament's Adverbs so wisely said, 'He that maketh waste to be rich shall be innocent.' No matter. The crew knows what to do. All you have to do is fly the aircraft. Of course, you may want to speak to the curious at the different fueling stops. So I've prepared several little speeches, just in case."

"When do I get back?" I could imagine the sort of speeches Giles had prepared and vowed to make only my own.

"You will return April second. You will join us aboard the Narayana, which will be anchored off the Battery in downtown Manhattan. All instructions are there." Dr. Ashok indicated the briefcase in my hand. "Go to it, Teddy Ottinger, Test Pilot and Perfect Master!"

The occupant of the telephone booth had gone to sleep, standing up.

The Garuda was ready for take-off. The crew was first-rate. My instructions were surprisingly intelligent. Giles had figured out exactly when and where I would need to put down for refueling and maintenance. As a result, the flight went off without a hitch.

Wherever I did put down, I was met by the press. The Australian press was unusually aggressive. Apparently, they had once been able to drive Frank Sinatra out of Australia. This feat had made them overconfident.

I was mobbed at Sydney airport. I did my best to appear serene.

"What's this lotus dingus you're promoting?" asked one of them.

"We're not promoting anything." I handed out white-paper lotuses. I also told them about the Lotus Lotteries. And the cash prizes. The press found the whole thing difficult to absorb. Meanwhile, a dozen cameras recorded this exchange.

"You mean you're not selling these lotuses?"

"Kalki is making one final gesture. He wants you to contemplate eternity before the end...."

There was rude laughter. "And the end is due to take place April third?"

"Yes." I smiled sweetly. "At noon Eastern standard time."

More rude laughter.

Finally, bored by dull questions, I gave them selected arias from Giles's richest and most flowery speech. Ending with, "The lotus is the symbol of the creator of the universe, a reminder of man's oneness with the spirit of the cosmos. Believe in Brahma, Vishnu and Siva and you will achieve heaven."

They were not buying this line in Sydney. They got personal. Finally, when asked if it were true that I was a lesbian, I belted the reporter from the Bulletin. This made for entertaining television, though not exactly suitable for the family hour.

Elsewhere, I was well received. For one thing, Kalki's television interview with Arlene had been shown in every country that had television. People were fascinated by him. Did they believe in The End? I don't think so. Did I? No, not really. I was, obviously, curious to see how he was going to explain the approaching Non-end.

Finally, right on schedule, I landed the Garuda at Kennedy Airport. I was exhausted. Overnight bag and logbook in hand, I got into a waiting limousine. And went straight to sleep. I was awakened by Geraldine's excited embrace. "Teddy!" she cried. "You're a hero!"

"What for?" Groggily, I got out of the car. We were at the Battery. Some distance from shore, the Narayana rode at anchor. Because of a recent oil spill, the waters of the bay were a thick gumbo in which dead birds floated alongside dead fish. We tried not to breathe too deeply as we climbed into the Narayana's launch.

Geraldine kept telling me how delighted they all were. "Giles was terrified something would go wrong. But Kalki said, 'Teddy Ottinger is the best,' and you are!"

With our arrival in the main salon, the Five Perfect Masters were at last united. I was embraced by each in turn. Giles was beside himself (but that self, thank God, was Giles and not Dr. Ashok). "You did not fail me, dearest Teddy. Others may have had their doubts about you, but not I."

Kalki put his arm around my shoulders. "You have been my fourth arm," he said, with a smile, "the one that holds the lotus. You did a swell job.

"The lotus," said Kalki, "is for all men now."

•

That night, we all had dinner aboard the Narayana, except for Kalki. He would not be seen again, I was told, until noon the next day.

My mood? Exhausted. I went to sleep in a hot bath and did not wake up until the water turned cold. Shivering, I rubbed myself hard with a bath towel. Noting the large blue K monogram, I again marveled at the money that was being spent. My trip around the world must have cost a quarter of a million dollars. I also recall thinking that if nothing happened the next day, Kalki would never be able to recoup financially. As I dressed (black velvet: a chilly night in April), I wondered if he might not be planning to hold up the world. Something on the order of: If you don't pay me X millions of dollars, I will set off a cobalt bomb in Grand Central Station.

Geraldine was alone in the salon. She looked lovely ... in red! That took courage, I thought, and a degree of good luck to pull it off. Redheads are usually washed out by all strong colors excepting the complementary green. In a low voice, she warned me not to discuss anything to do with the next day's activities, because "The waiters are all agents."

Geraldine made bloody marys for two. I prefer plain vodka but have never told her. Reticences between people are often strange. I asked her what Kalki was planning for the next day. Geraldine said, "Dance."

"I hope he's been doing his bar work. But then, after he dances...."

Geraldine put a finger to her lips. "The rooms are bugged," she said. She was maddening. With a secret smile, she turned on the television. The news was about to go on.

I drained my glass. I was drunk. Fatigue, jet lag, vodka together did their merry work. I was hectoring. (Why no verb from Achilles?) "Well, then, where will he dance?"

"On a barge, off the Battery. There's going to be live television coverage."

For some reason, this last detail struck me as unnaturally funny. Loonlike, I laughed. And laughed alone. Geraldine looked at me the way that I used to look at Arlene when drink had turned her head in a wrong direction. Fortunately, the appearance of Walter Cronkite had, if not a sobering, a solemnizing effect.

The news that Cronkite thoughtfully read for us was pretty much par for the course at the end of the age of Kali. Energy was in short supply. Arab oil was going up in price. A new ice age had just been predicted by all those scientists who had not predicted a new inferno due to the so-called greenhouse effect due to increased man-made fumes in the atmosphere due to all the due tos that had together made a man-made chain or noose about the human race's neck. There was famine. There was a mysterious new epidemic rampaging around the world. There was an announcement from the President that he had every confidence (he himself spoke to us with deep sincerity) that the Vice-President would be his running mate, which meant, of course, that the Vice-President would not be his running mate.

Finally, there was a small smile on Walter Cronkite's face as he read: "Tomorrow, the Hindu messiah from New Orleans, James J. Kelly, sometimes known as Kalki or Vishnu or Siva, will appear at noon Eastern standard time on a barge in the Hudson River just off the Battery in downtown Manhattan and, as the god Siva, Mr. Kelly will begin what he calls 'the dance of eternity.' According to the ancient Hindus, when Siva does this dance, all worlds will be annihilated. So the big question is this: Is Jim Kelly of New Orleans really the god Siva? If he is, then tomorrow is the end of the world."

Walter Cronkite allowed one eyebrow to lift. Had it not lifted, there would have been a national panic. The Dow Jones would have dropped through the floor. "And that's the way it is this second day of April...."

•

Shortly before dawn, the police came aboard ship. Giles was arrested. I slept through whatever commotion there was. By the time I was up, Giles was gone and the decks were crowded with New York's finest.

The morning was bright but cold. Snow had been predicted. Wind north northwest. Lakshmi was on deck, wearing a heavy winter coat over her sari. Geraldine had exchanged sari for a practical tweed suit from Peck & Peck. I joined them at the railing of the ship's prow. Together we looked down at the floating platform on which Kalki would do his dance. Just opposite us, the ubiquitous television crews had placed their cameras on a tugboat.

Lakshmi was nervous. I asked why. "They're trying to arrest Kalki," she said.

"That's a good reason. Where is he?"

"Hidden," said Geraldine. In the cold April light, her three freckles looked like miniature copper pennies.

"But then he will have to come on deck at noon," I said.

Lakshmi nodded. "That's the problem."

The police were still searching the ship. They were everywhere. They seemed to be having a wonderful time. I can't think why. They laughed, made jokes, waved at the television cameras on the tugboat. Although they were very much aware of us, none came near ... except McCloud. He stalked across the deck like the monster in a low-budget Frankenstein.

"Good morning, ladies," McCloud was courtly. We greeted him coldly. "Sorry about our friend Giles. But just as soon as he posts bail, he'll be out."

"Where are they holding him?" asked Geraldine.

"First Precinct. That's sixteen Ericsson Place. Two blocks south of Canal. We'll have him back with us by tomorrow at the latest."

"That's late," said Lakshmi.

"What was the charge?" I asked.

McCloud rattled off a series of crimes that were, in number if not in magnitude, presidential. The chief crime was trafficking in narcotics. "Sorry about this," McCloud added. He looked almost guilty. After all, triple agent or not, he had been an employee of Giles's for a long time.

"The least," said Geraldine, with some anger, "you could have done was to wait until noon."

"Well, there's been all this pressure on me." McCloud sounded vague. "Senator White, you know. Noon," he repeated. He blinked. Remembered what was afoot. "Hey, what's going to happen?"

"Siva will dance," said Lakshmi.

"But not," I said, "if he's arrested."

"Jason," Lakshmi said, taking McCloud by his right arm, "you've got to talk to the police. You must explain to them that no one must go near Kalki until after the dance."

"Well," said McCloud. And stopped. And thought. Then, "I don't know if I can. You see, the warrants have already been sworn...."

"People are often given an hour's grace," I invented. "To put their affairs in order. Say goodby to loved ones...."

"But these charges are pretty serious."

I had a lucky inspiration. But then, when dealing with a triple agent, one is triply armed. "I know for a fact," I said, speaking slowly, as to a child, "that my friend--and yours, too--Senator Johnson White is going to be very, very upset when he finds out that Kalki has been arrested before his hearing tomorrow."

McCloud looked ill. I had scored. "I know," he said, dismally.

Lakshmi scored, too. "Dearest Jason, you are such a friend of ours. And you've been so close to us for so many years! I'm sure you don't want anything unpleasant to happen to your associates."

"I am not," said McCloud, "an associate." It was plain that prison doors had begun to open in that treacherous mind.

Without another word, McCloud left us. We could see him on the ship's bridge, talking to several high-ranking policemen.

"Will he hold them off?" I asked.

"If he doesn't, he goes to jail," said Geraldine. "We've paid him off for years. And we've got the proof."

Lakshmi was uncharacteristically grim. "And some of the proof was given to him last night by Giles."

"The briefcase?" I asked.

"Yes," said Lakshmi. "It was the payoff for what he did at Madison Square Garden."

I was, momentarily, floored, or decked. But before I could speak, the noon siren went off. There was silence aboard ship. Then music played over the public-address system--sitars, flutes, horns--and Kalki appeared on deck.

Except for a tigerskin at the waist, Kalki was nude; his torso had been smeared with ashes; his neck had been painted blue. What looked to be miniature human skulls hung about his neck. Three writhing snakes were tangled in his hair. He carried a small drum.

I have no idea whether or not McCloud had persuaded the police to postpone the arrest. I do know that one look at that glittering figure and everyone fell silent. There were no more jokes, no laughter. No one made a move to stop Kalki--to stop Siva--as he walked toward the bow of the ship.

When Siva passed the three of us, we bowed and said, "Namah Shivaya." We were neither heard nor seen.

Siva descended the ladder to the floating platform. A circling plane released a cloud of white-paper lotuses. For an instant, the April sun was completely obscured. Then there was confusion as the police scrambled to pick up the paper lotuses.

Siva struck the drum with his right hand. Unnoticed by the lotus collectors on deck, the dance of eternity began.

As Siva twisted and turned, leaped and whirled, the age of Kali came to its predicted end.

•

Pascal: "Le dernier acte est sanglant, quelque belle que soit la comédie en tout la reste." I had better translate that. After all, I am the last person on earth who knows French. "The last act is bloody, no matter how charming the rest of the play." I leave to future historians all of the earlier acts, charming or not. I must now do the best I can to describe the last act, and its bloodiness.

When the dance of eternity ended, the age of Kali ended. Four billion or so men, women, children died. Not all at once. Some may have survived for as long as a week. We shall never know for certain. In most cases, death was swift--a matter of seconds, minutes, a mercifully unconscious hour.

How did this happen? Let me go step by step. This is the dangerous part of my narrative. A false step and ... no history.

First things first. Practical matters. We did not find Giles until later that afternoon. He had been locked up in a back room of the Ericsson Place police station. We searched. We shouted. He shouted, too, faintly.

We were obliged to break locks. To jimmy open doors. All this in the disturbing presence of dead policemen slumped over desks or fallen to the floor. One fat sergeant embraced a water cooler. Behind bars, we could see the prisoners as they sat or lay on their bunks. Many looked to be alive. None of the faces betrayed any sign of pain. Some looked surprised. But then, death had made no appointment. In most cases, the eyes were open and seemed still to see.

As the door to Giles's cell swung open, he shouted, "We've won!" Giles embraced each of us. Then he kissed Kalki's hand, murmuring, "Namah Shivaya."

Giles looked haggard. He was full of complaints. "Do you realize that they didn't even give me time to shave?" He rubbed the stubble on his narrow cheeks. "Fascists. No, really. They are. And you know that I never use that word lightly." Giles carefully combed his fringe of hair. "They wouldn't let me bring so much as a toothbrush. But," he said, turning to Kalki, "they did let me watch you on television. I saw you dance, Lord."

How did Kalki respond? Not at all. Other than an air of mission accomplished, he seemed perfectly unimpressed by what he had done. But Lakshmi and Geraldine were subdued, awed. Myself? Trapped in a dream, I expected any minute to wake up because I could not comprehend the unthinkable that Kalki, alone of all men, had thought.

Later, I was to wake up. When I did, I found that I had blotted out much that would have been unbearable. There are mostly blank pages in my mental album marked The End.

But I recall the rescue of Giles. I recall, vividly, the ride uptown from the police station. Kalki was at the wheel of a Call-a-Ride limousine that he had commandeered in Battery Park. I sat beside him in the front seat. The others were in back. I don't know why Lakshmi didn't sit beside her husband or why I did.

Everywhere, stalled cars, buses, trucks. Many of the drivers had died at the wheel. Out of control, cars had crashed into one another, driven up onto sidewalks, into glass showrooms. Since the city's traffic had stopped during the noon rush hour, Fifth Avenue was an obstacle course that Kalki managed, skillfully, to navigate.

None of us talked. Even the manic Giles was overwhelmed. While driving, walking, talking, eating, four billion or so bodies had been unceremoniously dropped by their owners. They had fallen to earth in the most extraordinary attitudes.

On the drive uptown, only Kalki took for granted the sights we saw, the sounds that we did not hear. The traffic lights continued to blink for an hour or so. Kalki went through green lights and through red. I was conscious of his body next to mine. The sweat from the dance had dried. I noted, in addition to familiar sandalwood and blondness, an acrid odor totally unlike Kalki ... Siva?

We parked in front of the Sherry-Netherland Hotel, across Fifth Avenue from The Plaza.

As we got out of the limousine, smoke began to curl languorously from the main door of The Plaza, gray and black stripes of smoke. From one end of the city to the other, untended kitchens had caught fire. But the fires did little damage, thanks to a series of torrential rainstorms.

Kalki suggested that we take rooms on the third floor, because "when the electricity goes off, the elevators won't run and who wants to walk up and down twenty flights of steps a day?" I did not mention that I would have been happy to put a thousand stairs between me and those decomposing bodies. But I joined the others on the third floor. During the three months that we lived in the Sherry-Netherland, I used up 1000 aerosol cans of floral spray. Whenever I went outside, I wore a gas mask, courtesy of the New York City Fire Department.

In April, we left the city only once. Lakshmi wanted to free the animals in the various zoos. So I flew her and Geraldine from city to city; helped them open the cages; let all the animals go, even the predators. Reptiles, too, except the poisonous ones. Geraldine was firm, and reluctantly Lakshmi gave way.

I was spaced out. The zoos. The hungry, frightened animals. The smoldering fires. The pervading smell of smoke, of putrefying flesh. The flies. The silence.

Except for that one trip, we seldom left the hotel, much less New York City. Obviously, we were waiting. But I did not ask for what. I asked no questions at all that first week. I did what I was told to do. Took Valium. Was a blank.

At night, we ate communally. Giles was a good cook. Lakshmi helped him in the kitchen while Geraldine set the table. No one cleaned up. All the dishes in the world were now available to us.

We took turns "shopping." Fresh fruits and vegetables went bad almost immediately, but there was every sort of tinned or bottled or preserved food. We lived on ham, sausage, bacon. From time to time, one of us would drive out to Long Island and pick fresh vegetables. If I had had any choice in the matter, I would have stayed in the countryside, where I was able to take off the gas mask and breathe fresh air. But I had no choice.

What had happened?

I had not a clue until our first dinner party at the Sherry-Netherland. This must have been a week after The End. I remember how taken aback I was when Lakshmi proposed "a dinner party." She was festive. I was not. But then, I was completely narcotized. I no longer dreamed at night. Nor, properly speaking, was I ever awake. Not only did I not understand what had happened, I was by no means certain that it had happened. I did not rule out the possibility of a long and elaborate nightmare.

Yet I got up each morning. Did whatever had to be done. Then I made the rounds of nearby apartments and private houses, freeing trapped pets. But after the third week, there was no point to that.

Giles and Geraldine had each taken a suite. Masochistically, I had chosen a single, rather uncomfortable room in the back. Saving money?

Indian costume had been abandoned. Lakshmi and Geraldine were both elegantly turned out. The result of hours spent across the street at Bergdorf Goodman's. Eventually, out of need, I made a visit to Saks, where I hurriedly assembled a number of unattractive odds and ends. Why unattractive? I don't know. I suppose that I didn't want to take advantage of our situation on the ground that, untaken advantage of, whatever that situation was, it might be tempted to go away. Everyone now ate meat. I noted all this without comment. I assumed that whenever they wanted me to know the new rules to whatever game they were playing, they would tell me.

Kalki mixed sazeracs. Somehow, he had got the impression that I liked them when I was in New Orleans. I had not. Do not. Despite or because of the Valium and the sazeracs, I was, if not festive, at least more at ease than I had been since The End. The others were in their very own seventh heaven. Kalki wore a denim suit, a flowing tie. Geraldine and Lakshmi were in evening gowns. Giles had found a tuxedo for himself, a size too large.

Sitting beneath chandeliers fitted out with real candles (my contribution), observing our reflections in tall gold mirrors and drinking potent sazeracs, I had a sense of lunatic well-being. Was glad that I was not one of the billions outside that suite, rapidly achieving maximum entropy.

We talked of clothes. Yes, clothes. Even Kalki had opinions. I listened. Narrowed my eyes so that the others became flickering amber blurs in the candlelight. For a moment, I had a sense that we had slipped, somehow, back into another century. The 18th. Soon Mozart would play. Voltaire would talk. I would practice my French, and never once dream of the horrors.

We talked of food. Of travel. Kalki turned to me. I saw him through half-shut eyes. A blue-gold blur. "You'll be traveling soon," he said.

"Where?" I asked. "When?"

"June. July. As soon as the streets are a bit cleaner." That was putting it nicely, I thought.

"To Europe," said Geraldine. "And I'm coming, too. My first trip."

"I'll be joining you, too," said Giles. "Europe. Africa. Asia. Wherever the kiss of Siva was bestowed."

"Yes." I let the monosyllable drop like a stone into their conspiratorial chatter. They stopped talking. Looked at one another. I could tell that I had been discussed at length. Should Teddy know or not?

It was Geraldine who inducted me, finally, into Perfect Masterhood. "We've been unfair," she said to the others as well as to me.

"Yes." I let the monosyllable drop a second time. I felt more than usually unreal.

Lakshmi seemed truly concerned. "But Teddy knows what happened."

"I don't think so." Giles looked at Kalki, who was looking at me. Kalki's expression was what was known to certain writers no longer with us as quizzical (origin, according to the O.E.D., "obscure").

"Well," said Geraldine, somewhat unexpectedly, "you did it, Teddy."

"I did what?" I looked at Kalki. He gave me a friendly smile. Blondness unfurled in the golden light like a medieval flag.

But Kalki did not speak. It was Giles who proclaimed, "You, Teddy Ottinger, delivered the kiss of Siva to the world."

I looked into the mirror opposite to see if my face was suitably blank. The mirror reported not blankness but anxiety. "How?" I asked, but knew the answer.

"The lotuses," said Geraldine. "You dropped more than seventy million. They did the job."

Giles stood up. Crossed to the dining room. Paused. He was torn between two passions: cooking and explaining. "Each of those paper flowers," said Giles, "had been saturated with bacteria that are instantly fatal to human beings as well as to certain but not all of our monkey cousins. Other mammals, fowl and Sauria are unaffected by these bacteria or plague or kiss of Siva, which is known to your friendly neighborhood pathologist as Yersinia entercolitica." Giles sniffed. The odor of beef Stroganoff was in the air. It was ready. Giles raced through his lecture. "Ordinary or garden-variety Yersinia is deadly but not invariably so. It is also not instant, not total. During the Vietnam war, the American Army's clandestine chemical-warfare division was able to isolate a peculiarly virulent strain capable of ending all human life on earth. This discovery was not only an enormous feather in the cap of the American Army's clandestine chemical-warfare unit but a triumph for the man who actually developed it, Master Sergeant J. J. Kelly." Giles bolted into the kitchen.

Lakshmi put her hand on Kalki's. "That's how he got the Distinguished Service Medal." She looked proud. "In fact, Jimmy was the only noncommissioned officer in all of chemical warfare to get such a high decoration." This was, by the way, the first time that Lakshmi ever called Kalki Jimmy.

"The research was fascinating." Kalki was suddenly alert. We all were. But then, the one (the only?) thing that the five of us had in common was a fascination with the technical, the theoretical, the empirical. It is no accident that we are who we are.

"Just outside Saigon," said Kalki, "the Army had this dream setup. A first-rate lab. First-rate personnel. Naturally, the whole thing was top-secret, because our Army wasn't supposed to be into bacteriological warfare, but of course we were. Anyway, in less than six months, I was able to isolate my own megavariation of Yersinia."

I had a picture of Kalki wandering about the world with a bottle full of deadly poison. I hung my picture for them.

Kalki was amused. "No. I didn't keep the original strain. I didn't have to. Since I already knew the process of isolation, I re-created the bacteria in Katmandu."

"We didn't need much," said Lakshmi. "Six ounces was all."

"Six grams," Kalki corrected her. "But that was easy. The tricky part was, first, achieving the right dilution. Then the impregnation of the paper lotuses. That was a real headache. I had to do most of it myself in a lab on the Narayana. Giles did what he could. But he's not very good with his hands."

Geraldine made a gesture, as if to bestow on me a medal or a rose. "But the greatest problem was delivery. You handled that, Teddy. Without knowing it, of course."

"None of this would have been possible without you, Teddy." Lakshmi was, gravely, loving. I was, simply, insane. "If every part of the world did not receive, simultaneously, the blessing of Siva, the age of Kali would not have ended all at once but gradually."

"That was the toughest part of all," said Kalki. "The instant that the megavariation of Yersinia becomes operative, it is immediately fatal, as we've seen. But if different people are exposed at different times, there is always a chance that an immunity might begin for those exposed last. So my main problem was finding a way to keep the bacteria dormant between your delivery of the lotuses and April third. I solved this problem by staggering the intensity of each dose...."

Giles announced dinner.

Kalki sat at one end of the table, with Lakshmi on his right and Geraldine on his left. I sat on Geraldine's left. Giles sat on Lakshmi's right. I give the placement (no French: I mean the seating arrangement) because that is the way we always sit at meals, and so must be depicted for all eternity. Namah Shivaya.

Everyone agreed that the dinner was excellent. Dutifully, I chewed. Swallowed. Tasted nothing. But I did drink champagne. A great deal of champagne.

"And so, finally, my dear Teddy, it was you and the Garuda and the prevailing winds that made all our dreams come true." Giles was teary-eyed.

"Why?" I was back to monosyllables. The others looked blank. I elaborated. "Why aren't we dead, too?"

Geraldine turned to Giles. "Doesn't she know?"

Giles shook his head like Dr. Ashok, head lolling disagreeably like a baby's, neck too weak to support Mother Nature's grotesquely swollen cortex. "No. On the excellent ground that, for security's sake, mum was for quite some time the mot juste For now, dear Teddy, it is safe for you to know that we are, each of us, totally immune to the ravages of Yersinia."

"We've all been immunized." Geraldine seemed angry at Giles for not having told me. "Through inoculation."

I surfaced. "I was never inoculated."

"But you were, dear Teddy. In New Orleans. By me. Think back. You have just regained consciousness in a bedroom of the Jefferson Arms, a stone's throw from the Watergate complex. You notice a bruise in the crook of your left arm. You ask me, 'What is that?' I say, 'I injected you with a sedative.' Well, that was not a sedative but the anti-Yersinia toxin to which you had, I must now confess, a nearly fatal reaction. For two days, you were so ill that I feared we might, dread thought, lose you. But, happily, you pulled through and, ergo, you are here."

"We're so glad!" In the uneven candlelight, Lakshmi looked more than ever like some ancient love goddess come to life. But then, when she congratulated me upon being one of the five people left alive on earth, I had a sense of drowning; heard my own subaqueous voice ask why she was so certain that there were no other survivors; tried not to hear (but heard) my question answered.

"We're almost certain." Giles's head stopped its unpleasant lolling. "But almost is never good enough. To make doubly certain, I go each day to the main studio of NBC in Rockefeller Center. I monitor the world for radio signals. To date, there are none. For the first time since Marconi, the four winds bear not a single human message."

"How quickly," murmured Lakshmi, her eyes on Kalki, "the Golden Age began."

"And how quickly," said Geraldine, "the age of Kali ended."

"I am dreaming," said Kalki, looking straight at me. "I am dreaming a new world, and we are the only people in it."

"For now," said Lakshmi.

I think I must have sunk to the sea floor then. No further memory of that night.

Copyright © 1978 by Gore Vidal

"With ease, he could have ended up in the clink--it took a lot of guts to enter the lion's den."

"There was no way of explaining the figure in the doorway--if this was not a dream, it was a ghost."

The concluding installment of this excerpt from Gore Vidal's forthcoming novel, "Kalki," will appear in our April issue.