The Face of Heaven: The Realms of Tartarus, Book One Read online

  Rypeck was not expert in any particular field, but with respect to any specific topic which happened to attract his attention he was capable of very rapidly picking out significant factors and gaining a good working understanding of it. His affinity with the cybernet was only a good working relationship after this fashion, but by the standards of the early Millennium it was remarkable.

  Heres and Rypeck were natural enemies to some extent The form of their personalities was such that they clashed inevitably over method and manner. Rypeck was an older man than Heres, and became a member of the close council before Heres joined it. Heres would not have permitted a man like Rypeck to be coopted into the council once he became Hegemon, but once a secret is shared, there is no way of taking it back. A member of the close council, once inducted, was a member for life.

  It might be argued that it was Rypeck who should have been Hegemon and not Heres. Again, this reflects the difference between their characters. Rypeck would have been a more efficient administrator, but it was Heres who commanded the following. In fact, had their positions been reversed both Rypeck and Heres would probably have found the situation intolerable.

  Like Heres, Rypeck was an excellent Hoh player. His basic assumptions and strategies were different, but he worked toward similar ends, and his play was only marginally less masterful than the Hegemon’s. Hoh provided an important touching point for their minds and personalities. It enabled them to get along together. Hoh was important in the lives of both men.

  Chapter 35

  “I have to confess,” said Rypeck, “that I’m frightened.”

  Heres regarded the image in his screen soberly. Though there was no animosity in his expression he could not keep it out of his voice.

  “There’s no need for melodrama,” he said.

  “I am frightened,” insisted Rypeck, “by the extent of our ignorance.”

  “Well then,” said Heres, “I suggest you set about alleviating some of that ignorance by telling me what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m talking about dependence on the cybernet,” said Rypeck. “Not the old, old argument about where would we all be if the net stopped working—I’m talking about a different kind of dependence altogether.

  “Quite apart from its operational functions the cybernet provides us with a central data storage system. That, of course, is one function that the cybernet is uniquely equipped to handle. It is at this point that we ought to see the perfect partnership of man and machine. The machine provides data storage, sorting and processing facilities while the man provides creative thought and purpose.

  “You know all about the controversies concerning machine intelligence and the possibility of the machine’s being able to provide the human element of the partnership itself. But you’ve probably not considered an alternative problem.”

  “Get to the point,” said Heres.

  “The point is,” said Rypeck, “that instead of worrying about one element in the partnership crossing the gap and fulfilling all functions by itself, we ought to be worrying about the gap becoming so wide that the functions cannot be fulfilled at all.”

  “You don’t make sense,” said Heres, drumming his fingers on the console of his desk unit.

  “Let me put it this way,” said Rypeck. “The machine isn’t duplicating human functions—but the human is failing to duplicate, in any meaningful degree, the machine functions. We are becoming too specialized as providers of creative thought and purpose. The cybernet provides us with a supremely efficient data store, but in order to use that store we must retain some sort of idea of what it contains and what processes may be used in order to exploit it properly. The cybernet is infallible. It never forgets. But this does not mean that we can forget everything we ever knew. In order to use the data in the net we have to know it is there. The partnership cannot work if neither element in it has any conception of what the other can contribute. The gap becomes uncrossable.

  “Because we rely on the cybernet to be our memory we have become an ignorant people. Not only that, but we do not even realize that we are ignorant. Because the cybernet knows everything, we consider that we do too. But what use is information in the cybernet if we do not know it is there, and would not know its relevance if we did?”

  “Eliot,” said Heres, “I’m busy. Did you call me to argue about a purely theoretical point or have you actually got something to say?”

  Rypeck sighed. “Yes,” he said, “I have something to say. I want to say that we are ignorant, and that our ignorance frightens me. But as that’s not what you want to hear I’ll tell you some other things instead.

  “I’ve been trying to find out what we know about the Underworld. I expected to find that we know virtually nothing. I never gave a moment’s thought to the Underworld until this matter came up. I assumed it had been ignored ever since the platform was completed. I was wrong. There is a good deal of information about the Underworld in the net. Some of it is very disturbing information.

  “Firstly, there is life in the Underworld. Secondly, it isn’t absolutely confined there. Spores from the Underworld plant kingdom and microfauna of all kinds flow constantly into the lower regions of our own world. The machines at the lower levels are equipped to deal with this constant invasion and do so most effectively. Almost nothing is manifest on the surface itself because these organisms are not equipped to compete effectively with surface organisms. But a number of species now established on the surface undoubtedly originated in the Underworld after the separation. There are no less than forty different kinds of automatic devices specifically designed to cope with the invasion of Underworld organisms in the lower levels. They are efficient. Within limits.

  “The Underworld is illuminated by several millions of electric lights set in the ceiling of that world—on the underside of the floors of our lowest levels. Their power consumption is not great compared to the power consumption of our own lighting facilities, but it is significant. Thus there are several facts for you to think about. The Underworld is alive, and it is alive—at least in part—because we keep it alive. It is not completely separate from us and it never has been. Enzo told us all at the close council meeting to remember the Underworld—to remember that the world the Movement abandoned is still there. I say that remembering is not enough. We should never have forgotten the Underworld.

  “Rafael, I have been working on this for a matter of days. What else is there that I ought to know? What else is there in the net that I might be able to find—if I knew what to look for? This is more important than the Magner affair. It’s more important even than the Underworld. We haven’t begun to count the cost of the eleven thousand years of the Plan, in terms of knowledge which we have lost and which we are making almost no effort to recover. We’re as innocent as newborn children, Rafael, can’t you understand that?”

  “You’re getting upset about nothing,” said Heres flatly. “I advise you to think about it for a while. What’s the point in coming to me with a lot of garbled nonsense like that? We need the information about the Underworld now, and it’s there to be recovered. All you have to do is recover it. Just get the facts, and forget the rest.”

  “That’s just the trouble,” said Rypeck. “We have forgotten the rest.”

  Heres made a gesture of annoyance and switched off the screen.

  Chapter 36

  Rypeck was not the only one who went digging for information in the cybernet and found more than he bargained for. Alwyn Ballow conducted some research for Yvon Emerich, preparatory to exposing Magner to the cameras. And Abram Ravelvent went in search of knowledge partly for its own sake and partly for the benefit of Harkanter’s expedition, which was getting together very slowly and in no apparent hurry.

  The degree of success which they enjoyed in searching out facts was various. Ballow did not get very far, but he did manage to find out about the lights. Ravelvent found out about the lights early on in his study and was inspired to investigate the flow of energy from Overw
orld to Underworld in rather more detail. In this matter he found a great deal more than he bargained for. A study of the energy budget over the Overworld covering a period of ten or a hundred years would probably have told him nothing. But Ravelvent, unlike Rypeck and Ballow, was pursuing a rather broader picture of the possible basis on which life in the Underworld subsisted. He dealt in thousands of years. With the calculative facilities of the cybernet there was no reason why he should not. Over a thousand years, even the tiniest discrepancies show up. And once he had located one discrepancy he began to locate more, and more.

  Ultimately, he was forced to the quite fantastic conclusion that export from the Overworld to the Underworld was not merely a matter of light energy and waste products. A steady trickle of materials of many kinds had been working its way into the Underworld for years. Not only the years of the Millennial society, but also the many long years of the Plan. In the days when every last ton of usable metal and every last scrap of paper should have been under strict control no less than in the days of present affluence there had been a steady drain of material into the world below. Manufactured goods had been continually exported, albeit on a microscopic scale, consistently since the day the platform was complete. Someone was—and had been for a very long time—supplying the Underworld with metal and with paper and with plastic. Weapons, tools and books.

  Ravelvent was forced to conclude that it was the Movement itself which was responsible. There seemed to be no alternative. But whoever was directing the supply, it was obvious that the machines of the Overworld were supporting not one world, but two.

  Chapter 37

  Porcel woke up with a sick headache. He was somewhat surprised to find that he was still alive. Had Camlak arrived back while he was unconscious, there was every chance that he might not have been. But Camlak was not back, and he had been removed from where he fell by some of the women. He was now in his own house.

  He decided almost immediately that there was no time to be wasted. There was no longer any problem about provoking a fight with Camlak. The problem now was to enlist support in making a formal affair out of the fight. Matters were coming to a head. The Communion of Souls would be declared soon, and then the bickering would start. Yami’s time was over and someone had to succeed him.

  Porcel went out in search of support. He expected it to be easy to come by, but he was wrong. It did not take him long to find out who it was that had hit him over the head, and with what. His standing in the village had fallen catastrophically. It was hardly any fault of his own that he had been felled from behind with a cooking pot, but that was what had happened, and his public image was in ruins.

  His temper, which had started out bad, got worse.

  Chapter 38

  Yami emerged from the long house to confront the assembled people of Stalhelm. He was dressed in his ceremonial robes, and he was already deep in the trance state. The Chief Elders lined up behind him. They, too, were in trance, but they would have no part to play in the Old Man’s declarations. They were present purely and simply for show. It was Yami and Yami’s soul that mattered.

  Before the Old Man came out the crowd had been making a good deal of noise. Camlak had returned only minutes before, with the main party of the warriors and virtually all of the field-workers, the stone-workers and the gatherers. Talk was flying back and forth across this large group with great speed and verve. But Yami silenced them all with a gesture, while he took up his position squatting on the high throne-stone. There he waited, until his audience settled.

  “The Communion of Souls is beginning,” intoned Yami, in his Oracular voice. “We must make ready.”

  There was a long, pregnant pause. The audience waited for Yami to proceed to the important business. The Sun had to be chosen, and the Earth, and the Star King. And the testing had to be determined.

  Yami let the silence drag on. This moment, in itself, was a kind of test. This was the moment when names formed on every tongue, when every mouth had to taste the name it held, and decide whether to swallow or to shout. This was the moment when ambitions had to be weighed carefully, and either discarded or committed to the test.

  Finally, Yami spoke again.

  “Who will name the Star King?” he asked.

  This time, there was no pause. Porcel stood up from where he crouched beside the throne-stone, and said flatly, “I name Yami.”

  Yami, in trance, was not permitted to react. He was not present in his own person, but in the person of his Gray Soul, and in the person of the Old Man. If he accepted his own name, as he might well be bound to do, then he would wake from the trance state not as the leader of his people but as their victim.

  Not one of the elders challenged Porcel’s declaration. They, too, had come to a decision in this matter, and they agreed. But Camlak, for one, was determined that the matter should not rest there.

  “I name Porcel,” he said, without rising from where he crouched at the back of the crowd. Porcel did not bother to react. He knew, as did the elders, that Camlak’s call could not be accepted. Yami was an ancient, at the end of his life. Porcel was a warrior. If anyone were to be named who had any real chance of being Star King instead of Yami, then it would be an elder, or perhaps a reader. Not a fighting man.

  But there was no other name. It had already been settled between those who mattered that Yami’s time was over. Even Yami would have accepted that. He loved life as well as anyone, but he knew as well as anyone the way in which life was lived—and from that there could be no freedom.

  “Yami is named Star King,” said the Oracle, speaking his own name without a trace of emotion. “Who will name the Sun?”

  This time it was bent-legged Chemec who sprang to his feet beneath the high stone.

  “I name Porcel,” he called loudly. This time there was a reaction in the crowd. Some laughed, others made vague sounds of agreement.

  The reader named Orgond then nominated Camlak, and this nomination too was greeted with mixed sounds of approval and derision.

  There was a pause, while the people waited to discover whether anyone else wished to declare his ambition at this particular point in time. And a third name was offered, and then a fourth. It was an unusually high number. But neither Porcel nor Camlak could be said to meet with unilateral approval, and this would be the last chance for a good many men who were passing or just approaching their prime, and in whom spirits ran high.

  The third name was Yewen, and the fourth Magant. Both these men were good fighting men, strong and intelligent, but neither of them would have seemed likely candidates. Their ambitions had been nurtured more or less in secret.

  Yami rejected none of the four names. A slight stir ran through the crowd when this was realized. Usually, these matters were settled directly between the aspirants, but the Old Man could hardly order four men into a ring to fight it out. Three dead men was a high price to pay for a Communion of Souls, and the winner of such a complex contest would hardly be able to claim all the credit of victory.

  “The names will be put to the test,” said Yami, still intoning in a low, smooth voice. “They must face the harrowhound. The one who kills will rise as the Sun.”

  Camlak felt his heart sink inside his chest. He had known that the time was come to face the crucial test—he had expected to fight Porcel in the ring. This test, however, was an entirely different thing. He would be at a disadvantage in a duel, but that was nothing compared to the challenge of facing a harrowhound. And in this manner of contest, he would have to face it alone. He looked toward the base of the throne-stone, and he found Porcel’s face amid the crowd. Porcel was looking back at him. Their eyes met and locked. Neither man knew what the other would do.

  Somewhere in the crowd, Yewen withdrew his name. After a pause of half a minute or so, Magant also indicated that he was unwilling to accept the test. Porcel and Camlak both remained silent. If either one refused, then the other would pass the test by default, and would not have to go through with the chal
lenge. Each man waited for the other to refuse, and when each man realized that the other would not they searched for the courage to accept.

  Finally, Porcel said: “I will kill the harrowhound.”

  It was a bold enough step, but one taken in bitterness rather than in courage.

  Camlak had no alternative but to declare that he also would attempt to kill the beast.

  The ritual then passed on, but as Yami—supposedly entranced—said: “Who will name the Earth?” a faint trace of a smile lingered around his mouth. Camlak was not the only one who believed that the Old Man, condemned or not, had contrived to have the last laugh.

  Chapter 39

  All forms of social organization are inherently repressive.

  In any society certain “natural” attributes of the human being (that is to say, attributes determined by genetic selection, defined over a matter of thousands or millions of years) must be set aside in favor of “unnatural” social demands (that is to say, demands which are historically recent and selected by nongenetic processes). In order that society should exist and develop according to the precepts of the individuals involved, a certain suppression of “human nature” is absolutely necessary.

  As a result of this necessity, it is inevitable that the individual in society should be the focus of a conflict. His instinctive pattern of reactive behavior and his socially conditioned pattern of learned behavior are at odds. The resolution of this conflict may take several forms. If the repression of instinct is total, then perfect adjustment to society becomes a theoretical possibility. Total repression, however, is itself a state of personal maladjustment. Society may enforce conformity by increasing the pressure of repression, but if this process is successful then society becomes an assembly of neurotics. If, on the other hand, society tries to reorganize in order to allow instinctive patterns some limited contexts for expression, the entire social unit will become “neurotic” in that it will always exhibit self-threatening symptoms.