Declare

the Biblical story was willing to settle for half of such a split.”
    “Jesus. This was done to Kim Philby?”
    “Very shortly after his birth in India, yes. And until he was ten years old he was verifiably able to be in two places at once, and he seemed destined to be the rafiq to the djinn. But then St. John had to go and father an illegitimate baby—you—who was born on Kim Philby’s tenth birthday. December thirty-first, both of you, though your birthday has always been given as January sixth, so as not to rouse Philby’s suspicions, and he has always claimed January first as his own. But you were both born on the same day in the solar year, you see? The night sky was the same again on your birthday as it had been on Philby’s, and the djinn in their literal way confused you with Philby. The two of you became the polarized pair, and Philby wasn’t able to be in two places at the same time anymore.”
    Again there was a knock at the office door; and when Hartsik got up and unlocked it to let Farid in, the Arab said, “I now smite the other man too hard. He bleeds more than this one.”
    Hartsik stamped his foot on the floor. “For God’s sake, Farid! Very well, hit this fellow again, carefully, and then get out of here.” He glanced at Hale and shrugged. “I do apologize, old man.”
    Hale stared at the Arab in disbelief. “No,” he told Hartsik. “I’ll just smear blood around.”
    Hartsik shook his head. “This has to be perfect, I’m sorry. Mammalian will be very suspicious in any case—you must be a precise match for the man who’s being interrogated.”
    Hale sighed deeply and turned toward Farid, bracing himself again. “If this becomes necessary one more time,” he told the Arab tightly, “I’ll smite you , I promise.”
    “Has to be perfect!” protested Farid. “Hold still, please.”
    Hale closed his eyes and gritted his teeth, and the fresh, hard blow on his already bruised cheekbone rocked his head and brought bile to the back of his throat; and he had to lower his head and breathe spittily through his mouth to keep the rainbow glitter of unconsciousness from filling his vision.
    He didn’t see Farid leave, but over the ringing in his ears he heard the door click shut.
    Hale took a deep breath and rocked his head back to blink at Hartsik out of his right eye. The man was relocking the door. “Does Philby know?” Hale asked thickly. “That he and I are half-brothers?”
    “Not that we know of. He might well suspect that St. John had an illegitimate child, and that the birth ruined Kim’s prepared destiny; broke it in half.”
    “Broke it. So Philby and I are two halves of one person.”
    “Well, in a sense.” Hartsik walked back to his chair behind the desk and sat down. “We suspect that you’ve been able to hear each other’s thoughts, in the season when the sky has assumed the definition of you; and probably you dream each other’s dreams then. And you do appear to—” Hartsik paused, awkwardly.
    “Don’t hesitate,” Hale said, “to add insult to injury.”
    “Well, Philby appears to have got—this is imprecise, you understand, armchair speculation—he appears to have got all the family feeling, the—practically obsession , in his case—with hearth-and-home, parents and wife and children. He’s been married three times, and he’s got five children. He has, though, no comprehension of loyalty, duty. Those qualities all seem to have flowed your way.”
    “And the Russians want—because the djinn require—the entire rafiq to be present.”
    “That’s it. You were both there in the gorge in ’48, but not working together. They couldn’t see you properly. This time they will open their gates to the two of you—and you will kill them.”
    “How?” Hale waved at the lead balls on the table. “Shoot them with these?”
    “Yes—a lot of them, cast in a much smaller scale. Birdshot caliber. Several shops in Beirut are now manned with clerks who will sell you prepared shot shells and an American derringer, chambered for the American .410 shell and rifled to the right so that the pellets will emerge in a pattern that’s turning clockwise as it expands, to match the spinning of the djinn if you fire upward. The djinn will assimilate the shot pellets—which is to say, assimilate the experience of death. Dying, they will no doubt throw spontaneous egg-shapes of their own, made of mountain stone or whatever is at hand, and ideally a chain-reaction