A Vision of Hell: The Realms of Tartarus, Book Two

by Brian Stableford

  He could imagine the Ahrima as shadows within the ruddy glow, shadow-monsters with their heads encapsulated by grotesquely huge horned masks. Men taking the form of beasts, accepting the role of the beasts, prideful of their bestiality. Black shadows in the light, clothed in smoke. The masks would shine, in the flamelight. The eyes would sparkle through the eyeholes.

  The Truemen, thought Camlak, would have it that the Children of the Voice are animals. They claim that we pretend to manhood, that our selves are false. But the Truemen are masked now, their eyes glittering like the eyes of the Ahrima, fugitive within the masks, hiding from the fire and the blood. A worthless attempt to save their worthless lives. Who are the fake people?

  Inside himself, Camlak asked the question of his Gray Soul. He did not expect an answer.

  As he turned away, content not to know the fate of Lehr and, ultimately, of Shairn—at least for the time being—he sensed a movement on the slope above him. Someone was stalking him as he had stalked the road. They had not been behind him long, but they were there now.

  Ahrima!

  He carried a bow and a long knife—he had left behind the axes and the Ahriman swords, which were too big for him. He put the bow across his back and drew the knife. He moved toward the sound, extending the blade before him. A shape rose from the barbweed, coming out from the hiding of a shallow recess. Empty hands spread wide.

  “No,” said the shadow. “Friend, not enemy.”

  Camlak did not need the sight and the sound to know. The way the shape had risen had testified to its crookedness. It was Chemec, the warrior with the bent leg. Of all the warriors, Chemec had lived. Chemec and Camlak. Why?

  Chemec knew. Chemec knew his bent leg, and knew that it had taught him all he needed to know about the art of survival. He had had to learn new ways to run, new ways to fight. It had to be Chemec that lived. No one else, save by luck.

  Camlak sheathed his knife.

  “It would be you,” he said. “It had to be.” There was naked bitterness in his voice.

  “And you?” Chemec retaliated. “I could say the same. We are both alive instead of dead.”

  It was true enough. Chemec flinched as he spoke, ready to run if Camlak remembered any one of a dozen times that Chemec had cast doubts on his manhood. Chemec had been a warrior when Camlak was yet a child. But Camlak did not remember now, and he did not react to Chemec’s words. It was all over.

  After a brief silence, when Camlak would not look at Chemec, and Chemec would not look at Camlak, the crippled warrior asked: “What now?”

  It was a plea for guidance—a warrior asking the decision of the Old Man, whose function was to decide. Chemec had been a warrior while Camlak was a child, but Camlak had killed the harrowhound and played the Sun in the communion of souls. Even so, Camlak was faintly surprised. He could not help but feel that perhaps Chemec was mocking him.

  “Stalhelm is dead,” said Camlak. “Do what you like. Anything.”

  Chemec shook his head. “I’ll come with you,” he said.

  “No,” said Camlak.

  Chemec did not understand. This would not have been Yami’s way. Yami would have welcomed him. It would have been Yami and Chemec, together.

  “We might go east,” said Chemec. “The Ahrima will turn south.”

  “North,” said Camlak.

  “We go north?” Chemec deliberately misunderstood.

  “The Ahrima,” said Camlak. “They will go north, into the heartland, to rip the bowels out of Shairn.”

  “We go north,” suggested Chemec. “To fight.”

  “No,” said Camlak again. “You go.”

  Chemec was silent.

  “It’s dead,” said Camlak. “It’s finished. Stalhelm is over. A memory, nothing more.”

  Chemec still said nothing. He could not accept it. It was beyond him. He was getting old.

  Camlak looked at the man with the twisted leg, and remembered that this had been his enemy. This man might even hate him, and hate him still. But he was ruled by the way, by the rule of the ritual.

  “I don’t want you,” he said.

  Chemec waited. He could do nothing but wait.

  When Camlak turned away, Chemec followed him. When Camlak half-turned, Chemec dropped back, but still followed.

  Camlak went north, but not to the heartland—not to fight. The heartland was well to the west of north, bordered by the vast Swithering Waste. It was into the Waste that Camlak went, heading for the great metal wall.

  Chemec followed, with infinite patience.

  CHAPTER 9

  As Burstone turned to lock the door behind him they slipped out of the shadows, and when he turned, they were there, blocking his way and pushing close to back him up against the wall. The alley was quite dark—it existed only to hide away the door from which Burstone had come. For a moment, he thought that they might be technics, on legitimate business, wanting to go down to the distribution units and wondering what he was doing there. But that was a hopeless wish. They had been waiting. For him. They knew who he was and where he had been.

  He didn’t know whether he ought to be scared or not. No one had ever interfered before. He was scared.

  One of them took the key from his hand. Gently. Then he put it back into the lock, and turned it. The door eased open when it was pushed. The dim light of the machine room filtered out, throwing vague shadows across the faces of the two men.

  Burstone overcame his momentary paralysis.

  “Do you want something?” he asked.

  “The suitcase,” said the man who held the key. He was a tall man, but that was all Burstone could be sure of. The glimmer of light wasn’t enough to let him see any facial details. It was much darker here than in the Underworld. The real stars were so faint.

  He could hear the keys being clicked back and forth in the tall man’s hand.

  “We just want to talk,” said the other man. Burstone became conscious that he was being held by the arm. He wrenched slightly, and felt himself released. But they still stood in his way, pinning him in the corner of the blind corridor. The door oozed shut, and the darkness became total save for the pale silver sheen of the sky, high above.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “Suppose we were the police?” countered the tall man.

  “Suppose you were?” said Burstone.

  “That’s right,” said the other man. “You don’t have anything to fear from the police. Nothing to hide. You’re doing nothing illegal. Any man in the world is perfectly entitled to take cases full of...whatever...into the Underworld. The police wouldn’t be interested. Surprised, but not interested. So who would? Who’d be insterested, Jervis? You tell us that.”

  The calmly threatening tone somehow eased Burstone’s mind. This wasn’t right. Of course it wasn’t right. They had no right. They had nothing against him. He wasn’t doing anything wrong. The way the man spoke restored Burstone’s confidence in himself. The surprise was fading. The situation was becoming known, and therefore controllable.

  “What do you want?” he asked, in a cool tone which said clearly that they weren’t going to get it.

  “You’ve been followed before,” said the tall man quietly.

  Burstone said nothing.

  “We know about that,” said the other. “He didn’t come back, did he?”

  “Suppose,” the tall man said again, “we were the police.”

  “I didn’t do a thing,” said Burstone, once more on the defensive, once more crawling back into a shell of fear. “Nothing.”

  “He didn’t come back.”

  “No,” said Burstone.

  “What did you do?” demanded the tall man.

  “Nothing,” repeated Burstone.

  “Suppose we knew what happened to him,” said the other. “We know his name. Joth Magner. Did you know who it was? You must have, of course. You could hardly miss him, could you?”

  “I never heard of him,” said Burstone.

  “You heard
of him.”

  Burstone pushed himself out of the corner. One man—the tall one—stepped back, to remain in front of him, barring his way. The other slipped in behind him. Burstone liked the new arrangement even less than the old. He had the ridiculous idea that at any moment the man behind might crouch, so that the tall one could push him back, make him fall over, like a small boy.

  “What are you trying to say?” asked Burstone.

  “Briefly,” said the man behind him, speaking close to his ear, “and without all the veiled threats, that Joth Magner followed you through that door a while ago, and he didn’t come back. We want to talk to you. Because we know about Joth Magner and the police don’t, we think you want to talk to us. All right?”

  “I didn’t kill him,” said Burstone.

  “What’s in the case?” asked the tall man, ignoring the protest. “And why?”

  Burstone considered the situation. He hadn’t killed Joth Magner. Not quite. But he had wound up the cage, knowing that someone had gone down, and that the someone would inevitably be trapped. He knew what the Underworld was like. He knew what would happen to him if he came back one day to find that the cage had gone, and that there was no way home. He knew.

  The worst thing was, he hadn’t an answer to his own question. He didn’t know why he’d done it. He’d been scared. He knew he’d been followed and he knew he was being watched. He could have just gone away and left it, but he was too frightened even to do that. He’d wound up the cage and solved the problem by elimination. He hadn’t known it was Joth Magner. He’d never seen the man who followed him. He hadn’t known. It was a momentary decision—almost a crazy decision. He regretted it now as he’d regretted it for a long time. He’d almost been expecting it to catch up with him. He knew that he was responsible for Joth Magner’s death. He felt it. He only wished that feeling it would tell him why.

  “Who are you?” whispered Burstone.

  “Does it matter?” asked the tall man.

  “Does it have to be here?”

  “No. You want to go home?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay,” said the other man, still behind him, still mouthing into his ear. “Let’s go.”

  Burstone moved forward. The tall man stopped him by jabbing a key gently into his chest. “I’ll take the case,” he said.

  Burstone surrendered the case. Then they went back to the cars, and he led the way home.

  CHAPTER 10

  “Can we forget about the game, now?” asked Burstone.

  “I don’t know,” said the tall man. “I’m not sure that it’s over.”

  Burstone felt better in the light. Now he could see the two men they did not seem so fearful. His feeling of guilt had faded, to some extent. At the back of his mind, behind even the guilt, was the conviction that whatever happened, it was all all right.

  “It’s only just beginning,” commented the other man. He was the younger of the two, slighter in build and sharper in the features. The older, bulkier man had a sallow complexion and gray eyes, which made him look somehow faded. Maybe careworn.

  As Burstone studied them, so they studied Burstone. He was small, very dark and apparently strong. Hard and compact. He also stank, but that didn’t surprise them. They knew where he’d been.

  “Who are you?” the tall man asked him.

  “You know who I am,” said Burstone, faintly surprised. “Who are you?”

  “We know your name,” said the man with the gray eyes, “but we don’t know you. We don’t understand you. We can’t figure you. You work in secret, in back alleys and dingy passageways. You fetch and you carry back and forth from the sewers. You work hard at it, like a little brown ant. And for what? We can’t even guess. Why are you invisible, Burstone? What makes you work so hard behind the scenes, carrying out your little jobs in utter silence, while the rest of us don’t know what, or how, or why? That’s the you we want to know. Not your name.”

  Burstone looked up at him. “I’ll settle for the names,” he said. “For now.”

  The younger man laughed briefly.

  “I’m Joel Dayling,” said the tall man. “This is Thorold Warnet.”

  Burstone knew that he knew at least one of the names, and he groped for the memory. He found nothing specific, but he discovered an association of ideas—a label.

  “Eupsychians,” he said. “What’s it got to do with you?”

  “That,” said Dayling, “is what we want to find out.”

  “This has gone on long enough,” said Warnet. “All right. You know who we are. You know what kind of a lever we hold. You can deduce why we want to know. The Underworld is suddenly a matter for concern. We need to know about it. You can tell us. We want to know what you know, and we want to know who else knows it. That’s all. We just want the truth, for once.”

  Now that Burstone knew who he was dealing with, he quickly recovered the last vestiges of his composure. He no longer feared exposure—not by the Eupsychians. He would be protected against the likes of them. His work was important—theirs was subversive.

  “I can’t tell you,” said Burstone.

  “Why not?” demanded Dayling.

  Burstone looked blank. It was a question he had not expected.

  “It’s nothing illegal,” explained the tall man. “We accept that. If you like, we’ll take your word that you had nothing to do with Joth Magner’s disappearance. If you like, and provided that we have something else to occupy our minds. We accept that everything that you do is perfectly in order. You could do it in the broadest daylight on a holovision spectacular, and we wouldn’t care. But you don’t. You do it in secret. Why?”

  “It’s better that way,” said Burstone.

  His tone was flat, and it was obvious that he was repeating something he had been told—something that he accepted without question.

  “Open the case,” said Warnet. Burstone reached out for it reflexively, as if to stop them, but Dayling had it safe. The tall man fished out the keys which he had confiscated from Burstone, and began to compare each one with the lock on the case.

  “Somebody knows why all this is happening,” said Dayling reflectively, while he sorted through the leaves of metal. “It just isn’t us. Maybe it isn’t you, either, but maybe between us we can work it out. Do you know who you’re working for?”

  “Of course,” said Burstone. Immediately afterwards, he wished that he hadn’t said it.

  “But are you right?” Warnet intervened. Burstone’s eyes flicked back and forth from the hasp of the case, where Dayling’s hands were working unhurriedly away, to the sharp, aggressive features of the young man.

  “What do you mean?” asked Burstone.

  “I mean,” said Warnet calmly, “that you might be wrong. If this thing is so secret, maybe they tell you lies, too.”

  “Nobody tells any lies,” Burstone contradicted him.

  The lock on the case gave way, and Dayling laid it down on its side, then lifted the lid. Inside the lid, supported by a double row of clips, was an assortment of metal implements. Knives, compasses, zip fasteners—a completely crazy assortment. In the body of the case there were a few heavier, more complex pieces wrapped in transparent plastic film, heavily greased. Two drills, two axe-heads and the blade of a scythe. Dayling lifted these out, one by one. Beneath the worked metal was a layer of books—not flimsy printouts from a household deck, but sturdy things, printed on heavy paper, bound in black plastic. They had been put together, obviously, by some complex accessory to the usual deck facilities. The sort of thing a collector might have. The world was full of collectors, despite the fact that almost anything could be had on demand from the cybernet. Most people liked to set aside some small area of experience as “theirs” and pander to their pretensions of uniqueness. Some people still liked to use books as of old—the “real thing.”

  Dayling pulled out a few of the books. There were some boxes stacked among them—boxes which proved to contain sets of small things—scissors, needles
, even surgical instruments. Dayling put them all carefully aside. When the case was empty he surveyed the displayed contents with a bewildered expression. He picked up one of the zip fasteners as if it was a snake, looked at it for a moment, and then dropped it with a gesture of annoyance.

  “You didn’t manage to deliver it, did you?” said Warnet quietly. “This is your end of the deal. You supply the Underworld with trade goods like the prehistoric Spaniards dealing with the Indians. Or is it more like the slavers, buying Africans with colored beads and mirrors? No colored beads, though. I bet you’ve taken down a mirror or two in your time, haven’t you? Do you really think it’s safe to give them all those sharp things? And what about the books? Aren’t you afraid they might learn something?”

  Dayling was looking at the books. “It’s a peculiar selection,” he said. “Not really selected at all. No pattern. History books, novels, elementary science. Memoirs of women of note...why on Earth...?”

  “I see,” said Warnet. “It’s all backwards, isn’t it. The books are the real exports. The useful stuff is the sugar on the pill. You’re trying to educate them, aren’t you. Missionary service.”

  “But why?” said Dayling.

  “More immediately,” mused Warnet, “what for? What would you have brought back with you if you had managed to dispose of this little load? Come on, Jervis, what do they give you in return? What’s in it for you?”

  “Nothing,” said Burstone. “I mean—nothing in it for me. What they give me isn’t mine.”

  “Nor is this,” said Dayling. “It’s ours. It belongs to the world. Production capacity of the cybernet. Loss of materials. Energy budgets. This is work, and time, and money, And it’s all waste. It’s all going down into the sewers. For nothing. What do we get in return?”

  “Books,” said Burstone, capitulating with the inevitable. “Their books. Scratches on bits of cloth and paper made of fibrous fungus. Hardly anything. What they can scrape together. Sometimes their trade goods. Colored beads, ornaments, carvings.”