“No,” he said. “I mean...I don’t know. Nobody knows. He was shot from a car. Ravelvent saw it. And your sister. But nobody knows who or why. We came down to find out—that as well as other things. He was murdered by a man in a car. None of us had anything to do with it. I swear it.”
Joth nodded again, several times. He was thinking hard.
Rath’s eyes were on the knife. “But you’re a man,” he said, in a voice that was even tinier than his whispers. “You’re a man.”
“I don’t look it,” said Joth, “do I?”
“You’re with them.”
Joth felt tempted to laugh. He had not laughed for a long time.
“My father’s son,” he said. “Champion of the Underworld.”
“Why didn’t you come back? Why didn’t you come to tell us?”
“I have come back. I will tell you. But not yet. There’s something I have to do first.”
“The rat?”
“The man. Camlak.”
Rath shook his head, trying to move himself away from the point of the knife. But it followed him, hovering only an inch from his adam’s apple. “Harkanter,” he murmured. “Taken him back.”
“What for?” Joth demanded. “To show off? How did they take him. Walking? Or drugged, caged, tied?”
“He was still drugged,” said Rath feebly. “In the cage.”
Joth took the knife away. Rath sagged slightly. There was a moment’s frozen silence.
“I don’t understand,” said Rath.
“I don’t suppose you do,” said Joth, now seeming a little weak himself. Rath scanned the metal visage, no longer quite so frightening, and then he looked at the shoulder, where the livid wound showed through the vast hole in the shirt.
“What’s happened to you?” said Rath.
“I’ve found out the truth,” Joth told him. “In a rather more direct manner than the way you have planned. I know what this world is like.”
“Your father....”
“...was wrong. But not the way you think. There’s more to it than that.”
“I don’t know. Not yet.”
“No,” said Joth. “You can’t.” Abruptly, he stood. But he did not move away. He simply looked down at Rath. Rath stared back, the fear coming back again in a sudden rush.
“Where are you going?” he said.
“I want you to go back to sleep,” said Joth. “What I tell you now is true, and you had better believe it. If you don’t, or if you go against what I say, then you’ll end up dead. I mean that. There are more...men...waiting out in the Waste. Don’t bother to try and trap them. You won’t. They’ll be watching. Don’t rouse the camp. Don’t raise any kind of alarm. Not now, not when you all wake up to go about your business. Forget what’s happened. Above all else, don’t contact the upper world. If this man Harkanter is alerted, I’ll kill you. If I don’t come back, someone else will kill you. That’s a promise. Do you understand?”
“Where...?”
“Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“You believe me?”
“Yes.”
“No alarm?”
“No.”
There was a pause. Joth was making every effort to scare the man into obeying him. He thought that he could do it. If not...then whatever would happen would happen. There was no way to make sure Rath kept his word, no way to exact retribution if he did not.
“What are you going to do?” breathed Rath.
Joth was searching the room with his eyes for the second time. He did not answer immediately. Before doing so, he picked up a rifle and a pistol from the table where they were ready to be picked up by anyone who wanted to go out into the Waste.
“I’m going up,” he said, finally. “To the Face of Heaven.”
As they left the tent, Joth sealed the flaps. But the smell lingered behind him, and Rath suddenly felt utterly contaminated.
CHAPTER 24
At the great metal door, he stopped.
“You must go back,” he said to Iorga.
“I will come,” said the cat.
“You don’t know what it’s like. You can have no idea. It’s my world, not yours. I think I should go up alone.”
“I will come with you,” said the cat, again. He was not insistent. He was merely stating his decision. If Joth had ordered him to stay in the Underworld, he would probably have accepted the order. But in truth, Joth did not want to go back to his own world alone. He wanted Iorga’s strength. It would be night in the Overworld now—he knew that because the camp was sleeping. If Iorga did not have to see the sun, why should the Overworld hold any particular terrors for him?
He said nothing. He opened the door, and they began to climb the stairs, together.
CHAPTER 25
“I think that you can help us,” said Rypeck.
“I hope that I can tell you what you want to know,” purred Sisyr.
Rypeck was sitting exactly as Warnet had sat, in the same chair. The expression of controlled politeness on his face was precisely the same. The faint sensation which he felt, of being imminently engaged in some kind of conflict, was precisely the same. Of all this, Rypeck remained, of course, completely unaware. Sisyr did not smile at the thought—if, in fact, the comparison was in his thoughts. Sisyr only smiled at human thoughts.
“What do you think of this so-called Second Euchronian Plan?” asked Rypeck.
“In what way?”
“Do you think it’s practical?”
“Anything can be done, given the requisite time and the requisite determination,” said Sisyr.
“Do we have those?”
“That is for you to decide,” Sisyr pointed out.
Rypeck paused for a moment, wondering how to phrase a question so as to extract the kind of answer which he wanted.
“Do you think that the Plan will be a good thing for our society?” he asked.
“That, also, is for you to decide.” said the alien, again.
“Do you believe that it will actually come to pass?” Rypeck tried again. “Will we actually manage to reclaim the Underworld?”
Now Sisyr hesitated. Finally, he said: “No.”
Rypeck felt a slight surge of excitement. This was what he wanted to hear. This was what he wanted to know. There was no empirical reason why he should be pleased to discover that—in the opinion of the one person qualified to offer an opinion—the scheme would not succeed, but there was an undeniable element of pleasure in the brief sensation.
“It’s been argued,” said Rypeck, “that we have desperate need of a Plan. The heart of the Euchronian philosophy is Planning. Some people say that we should have begun a second Plan before we even finished the first. The Movement exists to Plan, they say. Euchronia exists to Plan. Each Millennium, they say, should be a beginning as well as an end.”
“And what do you say?” asked the alien.
“I say: why? Why is the point of ends which are only beginnings? If the purpose of the first Plan was only to create the opportunity for a second Plan, would it ever have worked? I believe that the first Plan was successful only because it promised to deliver something real, solid, worthwhile and permanent. I believe that we should secure what we have made. I believe that the Second Plan is an exercise calculated to divert our attention from the real area of concern—which is the Overworld and Euchronian society. Perhaps we do need a Plan, but not this one. We need a Plan which will work with what we already have—one which looks to the future. This Plan looks backwards in time. I don’t like that.”
Sisyr said nothing.
“Tell me,” said Rypeck. “You were in very large measure responsible for the success of the first Euchronian Plan. Perhaps you had little enough to do with its ends, but you had everything to do with the means. Are you, then, a Euchronian? Did you believe in the Plan and what it was trying to accomplish?”
“In your terms,” said the alien, “no.”
Rypeck stared into the depths of his wineglass for a
moment or so, while he digested the implications of that remark.
“I expected something exotic,” he said, tilting the wineglass to show that he was referring to the wine. He was trying to fill in the gap before his next plunge into the esoteric realms of alien rationality.
“Wine from a distant star,” said Sisyr, his voice deliberately conveying lightness and humor.
“Perhaps,” said Rypeck. “Unusual, at any rate.”
“Earth is my home,” said Sisyr. “I live very much as you do.”
“But you don’t,” countered Rypeck. “You don’t live as we do. You live forever. You live outside our society, outside our terms of reference. Relative to Euchronia, you have objectivity. You can see what we do not in terms of our immediate future, or all the future we can reach in our imagination, but in terms of absolute time.”
“There is no such thing,” said the alien. “My view of your world is as subjective as your own. Mine is a different subjectivity, but it is formed in the same way: by experience. I have not lived through all of time. Even if I had, there is all of time still to come. I am not a man, but I am only an animal, just as a man is only an animal. I am sentient, as a man is sentient. I am not transient, but even a man is not ephemeral compared to those creatures which he has named the ephemerae. Are you objective enough to pronounce ultimate judgment on the destiny of the mayfly? Such a question is meaningless. What do you want to make of me? A god? Or simply the mouthpiece of a godly concept which you have, named Truth or Reason? There are no gods of the kind you want to make. There are realms beyond those you can perceive, beyond those you can imagine. But they are real realms, not quintessential dimensions superimposed upon your own. They are populated by real beings, living real lives, who are no less and no more relevant to your lives than you are to theirs.
“I do not know what kind of advice you want from me, my friend. I will tell you what I know in answer to any of your questions. But you must not try and make me into something I am not. You would not understand if I told you that I am only human, so I tell you that I am only animal. But I am forced to do so only because your concept of ‘humanity’ is so narrow.”
Rypeck shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I can’t think of you as ‘only human.’ I don’t want to make you into a god, or a priest, or a seer, or a mouthpiece for some imaginary ultimate. But what you actually are—alien, immortal, enigmatic, knowing more than the whole human race knows—all this means that I cannot think of you as human.”
Sisyr bowed his head. “I apologize,” he said. “It is difficult. What you see in me, and what I see in you...there is little enough understanding between us. Forgive me. But please accept my answers to your questions. They are the answers I see, even though they are not answers as you see them. Please ask your questions.”
Rypeck allowed a minute to drain past, emptying the air of confusion.
“Do you know what I mean by i-minus?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Please tell me. I...have to know that you know.”
“It is the effect by which your Planners attempted to unify the Euchronian Movement when the Plan seemed endangered. By secret censorship of dreams and intensive propaganda in association they contrived to commit everyone involved in the movement to a single set of ideals and perspectives. The active propaganda became unnecessary very quickly—once it had ‘taken’ it was self-perpetuating. The agent to suppress what your scientists called the ‘instinctive’ input into dreams continued to be supplied. It still is. In order to control and monitor the administration of the drug the Planners laid down strict rules as to which persons and groups of persons were to know of its existence and purpose. As an executive body in charge of the secret itself they established a ‘Close Council’ to whom all those party to the secret would be responsible. You, I believe, were coopted into this Close Council on the death of one of its members shortly after you were elected to the Council sixty years ago.”
“You seem to know more than I do,” commented Rypeck.
“Probably,” agreed Sisyr.
“I did not know that the Plan was endangered.”
“It was never admitted. History is always subject to the most stringent censorship.”
“You also seem less than certain about the operation of the agent. Are we wrong in believing that it controls the instinctive input into dreams, thereby short-circuiting the programming of instinctive behavior and response into the individual?”
“You are not wrong,” said Sisyr. “But I do not see the process in quite those terms. What you understand as ‘instinct’ I understand in a rather different way. But it is merely a way of looking at things. Your conceptual model of the way that the brain works is no less real than mine.”
Rypeck did not know quite how to interpret this statement.
“We believe,” he said carefully, “that the i-minus agent secures social stability. I, personally, believe that its use should be discontinued because its presumed effects, as reflected in our everyday life, do not seem to me to be ultimately desirable. Heres, and others, argue that if it were not for the cohesive effect of the i-minus agent, our society might well begin to disintegrate entirely. I will not ask you whether you believe the agent to be beneficial, because you would not answer, but I ask you this: in your opinion, would the discontinuation of the i-minus project result in the de-stabilization of our society?”
“I will try to answer,” said the alien, “but you must remember what I have already said. My answers are not necessarily yours. Your society is not stable. Change cannot be defeated, by any means whatsoever. In terms of the relative stability of your present situation, I would say that the i-minus effect is quite irrelevant. May I suggest—and this is merely a suggestion—that you consider the possibility that the apparent need for commitment to a new Plan is the legacy of the i-minus project.”
Rypeck pondered that suggestion. It was not altogether new to him. But as an argumentative weapon, it was distinctly two-edged. As an argument against both the Second Plan and the i-minus project it was viable, but from the standpoint of someone committed to either, it would become an argument in favor of the other.
He began another line of inquiry.
“Suppose the Council were to approach you and ask for your help with respect to this Plan, just as they asked for your help with the old Plan. Would you give that help?”
“This time, my help is not needed,” said Sisyr, ambiguously. “But I am always ready to help, in certain ways. There are kinds of help I cannot give, but my knowledge is always at the disposal of anyone who cares to ask.”
Rypeck eyed the alien carefully. “Knowledge can be misused,” he pointed out.
“Can it?” said Sisyr, blandly.
“If you favor one side in a conflict with knowledge which the other side does not possess, you give weight to that element of the conflict. However external you may be to the quarrel there remains an implicit judgment in your aid. You provide knowledge which supplements belief and morality. In a war, the side with your knowledge might win whereas under other circumstances it would have lost. Suppose the side which asked for your help were the aggressors? Suppose they used your knowledge to slaughter their enemies, or enslave them? Suppose both sides asked for your help, and you aided both, so that the result of the war, in terms of winning, was not altered, but that hundreds of thousands of people were killed, who need not have been had the warring parties not had access to the knowledge which made such slaughter possible?”
“For such help as I give,” said Sisyr. “I accept the responsibility. The consequences of my actions have to be weighed—according to my standards and precepts. But what you describe as the possible consequences of action can, under other circumstances, be the consequences of inaction. My presence on Earth is a fact. When I am asked for help, I have to weigh the consequences of refusal as well as the consequences of agreement. According to my own morality. It is always possible—inevitable—that when some of yo
u will judge me right, others will judge me wrong. In the end, only I can decide—but I cannot decide according to your criteria.”
“I see,” said Rypeck. “Then may I suggest—and this is only a suggestion—that you consider the following possibility. Neither Heres nor the Council will approach you for help with the Second Plan. They will see the Second Plan as an opportunity to accomplish something that is completely the work of the Euchronian Movement. They have claimed the credit for the first Plan, and perhaps that is right. They have excluded you from their history and their memory so far as is politic and practical. They do not want you in the Second Plan. They want to do without you, to prove to themselves that Euchronia is adequate.
“In this instance, therefore, we do not need to concern ourselves with the possibilities inherent in your action. What we do need to consider, however, are the possibilities inherent in your continued inaction. If you do nothing, then the i-minus project will continue, and the Second Plan will get under way. You have already said that you do not believe the Plan will succeed. The Underworld will not be reclaimed. We face failure, therefore. What would that do to our world? What is going to happen to both the Overworld and the Underworld if Heres’ scheme marches forward to its failure? I offer these thoughts for your consideration. I do not ask you to intervene now, to further my aims or Euchronia’s aims. I just ask you to think.”
Sisyr nodded. Rypeck’s suggestion was no more new to him than his had been to Rypeck.
“You know that the Underworld is lighted by electric stars?” said Rypeck, changing direction again.
“Yes,” said Sisyr.
“You know that the Underworld is supplied with materials from the Overworld, somehow?”
“Yes.”
“You know how?”
“Yes.”
“No need to go into it now. I’ll ask some other time. It’s not important. Suppose that the Underworld doesn’t want to be reclaimed. Suppose the Second Euchronian Plan becomes an all-out catastrophe. A conflict of motives. If Heres and the Council decide to reclaim the Underworld in spite of the Underworld, and it comes to war, who do you help? The Overworld, by inaction, or the Underworld, by intervention? What happens when Heres puts the stars out? Do you switch them on again, or do you let us destroy the Underworld before we can turn it into a garden? Just tell me that.”
A Vision of Hell: The Realms of Tartarus, Book Two Page 10
