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

  “If there are men in the Underworld today—and I feel obliged to say if—then we cannot rationally imagine that they have anything in common with the men of prehistoric ages, let alone with ourselves. They would not merely be primitives and savages, they would—quite literally—be animals. They would be forced to spend their time providing the bare necessities of survival—food and fecundity. They would be no more human than cattle or, if you would like a more appropriate example, wolves. If they work in groups, the groups are packs and not tribes.”

  “You paint a very harsh picture,” said Magner.

  “It is a realistic picture,” insisted Ravelvent.

  “You seem to have virtually no faith in humanity as a species or the human being as an intelligent, adaptable creature,” said Magner.

  “Faith! What has faith to do with it? We cannot decide what the Underworld is like on the basis of faith. We cannot determine the nature and the abilities of man by wishful thinking. There are facts to be taken into consideration. Hard facts which we know to be true. Even as a speculative exercise, we must make full and complete use of the facts in sketching a picture of what life might be like in the world below. Complete fidelity to known science is an absolute necessity in any proper use of the imagination. I know that the account you give of the Underworld in your book is the product of your imagination purely and simply because you have used that imagination badly. It is an imagination undisciplined by fact. If we are to open the Underworld—and I do not believe that proposition to be unreasonable—then we must have a realistic idea of what we are likely to find.

  “You seem to think that all that is necessary is for us to throw wide our gates, and the men of the Underworld will queue up to desert their world. Perhaps that is so. It can hardly be doubted that they would find our world a more attractive proposition than theirs, provided that they could stand the sunlight. But you seem to assume that the story ends—happily—there and then. That is patently ridiculous. If these creatures—and I say creatures quite deliberately—come into our world they will not do so as citizens of Euchronian society. They will do so as predators and scavengers—as beasts. In prehistoric days they gave accounts of feral children—men reared as beasts—and they said that such children could not be reeducated to human ways. They could not even be made to walk like men. You are proposing that five hundred generations of feral children can be accepted into the human race just like that!

  “If we open the Underworld, then we must do so both forewarned and forearmed. We cannot do so in order to deal in any way whatsoever with the people of the Underworld. Our chief priority must be to explore, to discover, and to evaluate. We are far more likely to find that the rigors of the Underworld are breeding creatures which are a potentially deadly threat to us than men which we can communicate with. We must know about the Underworld, and we cannot afford to turn our backs to it forever. But we must recognize that these anthropocentric ideas of yours are nothing but a tissue of dreams.”

  Ravelvent stopped, unaware of the effects which his last remark might have had on Carl Magner.

  Magner made no immediate reply. In the final analysis, he had nothing with which to argue save conviction, and that was one thing which the people of Euchronia’s Millennium could not accept. They did not even know what it was.

  “We must send people into the Underworld,” said Magner. “A proper expedition must be mounted, as soon as possible. This is the first priority. When it returns, then we will all know that what I have said is true. Every last detail. I know that there are men in the Underworld who live as I have seen them living. We have no right to withhold from them the Face of Heaven.”

  “I think,” said Ravelvent, “that when the truth is revealed, it will be closer to the picture that I have drawn.”

  Chapter 20

  The basis of Eupsychianism is the philosophy that a better life is to be sought inwardly rather than outwardly.

  Eupsychianism is, implicitly, the alternative to and the enemy of Euchronianism. Whereas Euchronian ideals are directed toward collective man, favoring the group rather than the individual, Eupsychian ideals are intrinsically self-centered and self-limited. Euchronianism is an extrovert philosophy, Eupsychianism is introverted.

  The essential difference between the two opposing philosophies is not a matter of the extent of freedom, but of the very meaning of freedom.

  A Euchronian would claim that a man is the product of his environment, and that the enrichment of a man is attainable purely and simply by the enrichment of his environment. A Euchronian would argue that the perfect freedom is the. freedom to manipulate and shape the environment, the freedom of the environment.

  A Eupsychian would say that the whole essence of man is the power to transcend his environment, and that capitulation to the forces of the environment is equivalent to the destruction of humanity itself, or at least the subjugation of that humanity to purely mechanical external demands. A Eupsychian would argue that the only true freedom is freedom from the environment.

  Paradoxically, a Euchronian Utopia would probably be very little different in appearance from a Eupsychian. The difference would lie in its direction of development. The society of the Euchronian Millennium is by no means anathema to the Eupsychians, who form the principal (minority) opposition to the political arm of the Movement proper. The difference between the factions is to do with attitudes to people and the functional design of social institutions rather than with the mechanical components of the civilization. Both factions admit to the machines as the ideal means of providing for the basic needs of survival. But the Euchronians are dedicated to stability—to the management of collective mankind, while the Eupsychians reject any such notion with disdain. They reject all forms of political and social management.

  It would be naïve to imagine that the split between the factions as it is reflected in Euchronian society is quite that clear or quite that orderly. Citizens come in all shades of opinion. Not everyone would call himself a Euchronian or a Eupsychian, and two men who accepted the same label might have very different views—not only at a trivial level, but in terms of basic priorities.

  However, in the context of the Euchronian Millennium, the polarization of political attitudes may be said to fall along the defined spectrum.

  The Euchronians, for the most part, regard the Eupsychians as traitors. There is some justice in this—the Euchronian Movement planned and built the civilization in which they live, and built it by means of absolute dedication on the part of the Plan’s participants. In the eyes of the Euchronians, Euchronianism has proved itself absolutely.

  The Eupsychians, on the other hand, see the Euchronians as having become redundant on the day the Millennium was declared. There is some justice in this too—the society of the Millennium is ultracomfortable, but it must be admitted that there is a surprising amount of unrest and unhappiness. Despite the fact that no citizen of the Millennium lives in a state of deprivation there is a significant crime rate, and crimes of violence are not uncommon—though the violence involved is usually at a trivial level. Violence against the machines which provide for the populace is also surprisingly common—and this is occasionally not so trivial. The Eupsychians claim that now the priority is no longer survival but freedom, then true freedom must be encouraged, not the Euchronian version. On the other hand, the Euchronians would counter this argument....

  The debate, of course, continues.

  Chapter 21

  Joth was panic-stricken.

  He was moving through perpetual night, timelessly, going nowhere, with no motive for going.

  He had no sense of direction, no sense of distance, no sense of speed. It might almost be said that he had no sense of being. He was not afraid.

  Joth had no instinctive reactions. Instinctive reactions had been withheld from him, deliberately and strategically. Instinct would have allowed him to be afraid. It would have given him a context for fear, and the physiological component of the emotion would have
mobilized his resources for a fear-reaction. He would have run, but behind his running there would have been an urgent, fear-stimulated consciousness.

  Without instinct, Joth was in the grip of panic. There are reactions which go deeper than conditioning, deeper than instinct, deeper even than reflex. Conditioning and instinct are both properties of mind—of mental organization, however primitive. A dog has instinct, a bird has instinct, a fish has instinct. Below mind, there are still mind-like reactions, An amoeba has tropisms, a mollusc has tropisms, even a plant has tropisms. These things too have some component of function in them, of reason. In that sense, Joth’s panic had some semblance of reason. When mind is inadequate—totally inadequate—to deal with situation-stimulus, then mind must step aside and allow something deeper to assume control of body. Joth’s mind had recoiled when he found himself trapped in the Underworld—recoiled all the way. It had simply denied all responsibility, refused to have any part in determination of events. Joth’s actions had passed into the control of something different—something more basic than the essential him, his identity.

  Joth ran. Hard. He was outside time and outside sensory perception. His ego was in a well of utter, ultimate loneliness. Perhaps beyond space also, isolated from the universe itself. Nowhere. In the oceanic, transcendental regions where the soul lives (if men have souls).

  His heart pumped at a furious rate, his muscles sucked up energy at the very limits of their capacity. His limbs levered his body through space without any regard whatsoever for the strain on the ligaments and membranes.

  He felt no pain. Yet.

  His eyes reflected the gleam of the stars, but did not see. Even so, his headlong flight failed to bring him into collision with any of the pillars which supported the sky, or with any of the impenetrable clumps of vegetation which dotted the ground between them.

  Eventually, however, there had to come a time when the body could no longer put up with the demands which were being made upon it. It simply could not meet them. When that happened, Joth collapsed, and he lay still.

  Again, the interval was timeless.

  When he came to, his mind was once again in his brain. This time, he opened his eyes and he could see the stars in the sky, pale and still. He knew where he was.

  He could not move. His whole body was being eaten by pain. He lay face upward in inch-deep mud and slime, and he could feel the wetness all over his back and his legs and the back of his head. There were cockroaches moving over his body, but he could do nothing. He was helpless.

  It was as though he was newly born for a second time. He could remember the world above, and he knew who he was. There was no amnesia. But he had lost his connection with the memories. He had lost mental continuity. The legacy of the whole of his life—more than twenty years—was suddenly incomplete, inadequate, insane. The facts remained, but all the meaning had somehow drained out of them.

  Tears began to ooze from the lachrymal glands in the corner of each eye.

  A cockroach, wandering across his face, had to struggle hard to escape when it almost fell into the pit of his open mouth.

  Chapter 22

  Ermold was running. There was, perhaps, just a hint of panic about his headlong flight, but it was panic which shared control of him with honest fear and cold rationality. The leaf-bladed dagger which Camlak had flicked into his belly had hurt him badly, but it had done him no permanent damage, if only he could win free to let it heal. The big danger was that running might rip the wound farther and farther open, spout more and more blood from its orifice, and ultimately make it into a mortal blow. No vital organ had been touched, but a hole in the belly was a hole in the belly, and Ermold needed time.

  He knew exactly how many men were after him, and he knew that it was no use making any sort of attempt to reduce the odds unless he could get them well and truly strung out. Arrogance assured him that if he could take them one at a time he could dispose of all five. He would have to, if he was to get away. He could hardly hide while he was spilling a trail out of his guts, and the prospect of help arriving was remote indeed.

  While he ran, he sustained himself with thoughts of what he could and would do to Huldi and Camlak when he recovered. In order to make those fantasies into fact he had to survive, and his indulgence was no mere whim. He was feeding his need, fueling his determination.

  Objectively speaking, he had very little chance of getting away. But circumstances are rarely defined objectively. The odds are never what they seem. Probability is a measure of a mechanical universe, not a human one.

  He did not attempt to cross the canal. Climbing the low wall would not be difficult, and gaining his own territory would no doubt reduce the advantage enjoyed by the rats, if only in a psychological sense, but he simply dared not dive into the poisoned water with an open wound in him. That would be fatal.

  He placed his faith in the length of his stride and the innate superiority of man over false man. The innate superiority was a myth, but it was faith that counted and not truth. The length of his stride, however, was an important factor. The Children of the Voice were fast movers, but they were built for short-distance work, not long cross-country chases. While Ermold ran he stayed ahead of his pursuers and gradually, he did begin to string them out. He tired, and they tired, and the battle condensed, temporarily, into a battle of Ermold’s wound-affected endurance versus the Shairan warriors’ natural endurance.

  As the clutching hands of fierce pain and the weakness of lost blood reached out to claim Ermold and put an end to that phase, forcing him to turn and stand, fate intervened.

  As he blundered round a cluster of pepper-squab stalks his foot was snagged by a creeper, and he was brought heavily to the ground. The fall jerked the wind out of him and tears blurred his eyes. When he blinked and focused them again he found that his own face was mere inches away from another.

  And the other face was made of shiny steel.

  Chapter 23

  Porcel was too far behind Ermold to see him fall, but he slowed down as he came up to the pepper-squabs because of the smell. He knew something was behind the cluster, but he could not for the life of him think what it was.

  He did not stop, but he allowed his body to relax into a crouch, with his dagger arm extended before him, ready to tackle anything.

  As he came round the corner the steel face was thrust forward into his own. The surprise was just too great. He bounded backwards, hesitated, and then ran.

  Ermold dropped Joth’s limp body back into the mud and peered through the curtain of creepers after the fleeing warrior. He saw Porcel meet the next man, and the next, and he knew that once all five were gathered together they would pluck up the courage to approach. He glanced down, and saw that Joth was squirming slightly, beginning to recover some vestige of control over his limbs.

  Ermold kicked him, but not very hard. “Get up!” he hissed.

  But Joth couldn’t.

  Somewhere, not too far away, a harrowhound howled. Ermold cursed beneath his breath. There were enough hunters abroad without new ones trying to get into the act. But he knew that the harrowhound’s nearness might work for him as well as against him. It would worry the Shaira as well, and they wouldn’t be keen to split up again.

  He reached down and hauled Joth to his feet, shaking him to try and jar some sense into his brain. Finally, Joth could stand. By this time, though, the warriors of Stalhelm were coming forward again.

  Ermold shoved Joth forward, steadied him, and then shoved again. Then, without bothering to find out what effect, if any, Joth would have on the advancing Children of the Voice, he turned and ran. The rest had done him little enough good, but he hoped fervently that he would not need the power of his legs much longer.

  Chapter 24

  Joth staggered no more than six paces before slumping forward again. He fell first on to his knees, and then toppled forward face-first into the mud. Moments later, he felt himself being turned over.

  His consciousness was still s
eeping back with tortuous slowness. It was without surprise and without wonder that he looked up at the ring of faces inspecting him.

  The creatures were small. Pygmies or dwarfs...perhaps goblins. Their faces were more beast-like than human, but Joth could not for the moment pin a name to the beast. Their noses were large, their eyes small black beads. Their teeth were closely packed inside their mouths. Their ears were tiny and rounded, mounted oddly—too high, too far apart.

  He tried to speak, but he was unable to produce any sound other than a low groan which—when he forced it—came out something like a cat’s purr.

  He gave up the attempt. One of them passed a hand over his face, feeling the metal and the plastic flesh-substitute which, in collaboration, provided the whole structure of his cranium, his eye sockets, his nose and his cheeks. Only his lower jaw and bottom teeth were real—those he had been born with. His eyes were metal orbs, but they functioned as eyes (better than real ones) and they connected to optic nerves which were his own. The olfactory organ, however, was not functional. He had no sense of smell.

  “It’s a mask,” said one of the weird creatures.

  “No,” said the one who had run hands over his face. “It’s real.”

  Joth realized that they were speaking English. As the faces peered closer he saw that they were covered in sleek gray fur. The fur and the fact that they spoke combined to give him a fleeting sensation of paradox. Then he lost consciousness.

  The Shaira argued among themselves for a few moments, and then came to a decision which might have been motivated more by fear of Ermold than by concern for or interest in Joth. They picked him up by his ankles and his shoulders, and they carried him away in the direction of Stalhelm.