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

by Brian Stableford

  Harkanter was actually reaching for the gun when the backlash came. His mind had absorbed the energy of the discharge completely—Harkanter was not aware that his brain had been working during the period of unconsciousness. So far as he was concerned, it was completely black time. But now, as the normal patterns of thought and the cohesiveness of self began to reassert themselves, the way was clear for the images to display themselves. The energy which had flooded into the mind now flooded out again, as though a coiled spring were released.

  From Harkanter’s point of view, it was sheer insanity. His hand was snatched back from the gun before his fingers touched the butt, and he writhed like a wounded worm. The images flashed inside his brain like a firework display. Real pain racked his body.

  It lasted only a few seconds, but it reduced him once again to near helplessness. He failed to collect himself; his muscles worked of their own accord. His fingers clenched and unclenched with such fierceness that his fingernails tore into his palms. He soiled himself.

  In the meantime, Iorga became conscious. He watched Harkanter’s agonies for a time, quite dispassionately. But then he saw the big man begin to reassert his will, and he saw the gun on the floor. He realized what was happening. He too began to reach for his weapon.

  It was a strange and desperate race. Subjectively speaking, it was also a long race, although by the hands on the clock it took place within the span of a few seconds. The complexity of the actions involved made it a long race, in terms of mental coordination and control. Harkanter had to reach the handgun, take it into his fist, steady himself enough to aim it, get his forefinger round the trigger and...if necessary, or desirable...fire it. Iorga already had the gun which Joth had asked him to carry—the rifle. It was underneath his fallen body. But he, too, had a struggle before him. He had to lift himself, roll clear of the gun, grip the weapon, and then lift it into position. Then...it depended on Harkanter. Iorga had no intention of firing unless fired at.

  Beyond the moment of firing—or not firing, as the case might be—neither man had any thought. They were both concentrating on the immediate task. Had they stopped to think about the future, they would have condemned themselves to failure in the present. To do what they were trying to do they needed all their strength and complete commitment.

  Harkanter’s groping fingers finally touched the pistol.

  Iorga found his body moving, found himself coming clear of the rifle. But the mechanism of the gun caught in his clothing, and the gun began to drag along the floor with him as he moved.

  Harkanter pecked at the gun with fingers that would no longer close. Blood running from his palms dripped on to the tiles. The gun rocked on its chamber, and the butt spun away from him.

  Joth was beginning the long journey back from oblivion.

  Iorga planted both hands on the rifle, one on the stock and the other half way along the barrel. He grappled it free of the entanglement. He lost balance and rolled backwards, but the gun was free. He was laid out flat on one side, the barrel was pointed the wrong way. He began to turn it, trying to bring it to bear on the crawling Harkanter before trying to come to grips with the trigger mechanism.

  Harkanter dabbed at the pistol, uselessly.

  Time dragged by, and nothing happened. Vicente Soron sat up on the staircase and looked through the guardrail, trying to understand what was happening.

  Joth opened his eyes.

  Julea, now conscious, kept hers closed tight. She did not want to know. She hardly knew whether she wanted to be alive.

  Harkanter got his hand round the butt of the gun and picked it up. He rocked back on to his haunches and tried with his other hand to force his finger round the trigger.

  Somehow, his groping released the safety catch. He heard it click and knew that all he had to do was press. A burst of elation helped sensibility to return. He got his finger inside the trigger guard.

  Iorga was picking up the rifle. It seemed incredibly heavy and cumbersome. He heaved at it, almost like a weightlifter trying to press a dumbbell. He heaved again, at himself rather than the apparent dead weight of the gun. His body was working again, the gun came up, and slotted naturally into his grip.

  Joth tried desperately to clear his head, and in trying to speak he managed a groan.

  Julea heard the groan.

  Soron remembered something, and tried to shout, but no sound came.

  Harkanter leveled the pistol and fired.

  Iorga watched the dark finger tighten on the trigger. He reacted immediately, without conscious decision. Sheer inertia carried him through to the endpoint of his action, just as it carried Harkanter through to the endpoint of his.

  The hammer of the pistol clicked harmlessly. The chamber was empty.

  Iorga had already returned the fire. There was no way to hold the action.

  The rifle bullet blew Harkanter’s head off.

  CHAPTER 45

  All over the continent, the holovisual network was carrying an interview which featured Abram Ravelvent and Vicente Soron. Other time zones were scheduled to see the recording at the same relative time, as they moved into night. They never actually got to see it at all.

  While Soron, in the flesh, was trying to drag himself back through the cellar door, desperate to escape from the threat of Iorga’s gun (an imaginary threat, as the recoil had thrown the hellkin back, and ripped the rifle from his hands) his image was in closeup in a million homes, ten times life-size, telling the world what the Underworld was like.

  The world was not listening. It had other things on its mind. But the broadcast continued.

  There was a certain irony in its contents.

  After Soron had finished, Yvon Emerich turned to Ravelvent and said: “What do you think of the idea that the rats might be the dominant species in the Underworld?”

  “I think it’s absurd,” said Ravelvent.

  “But the evidence....”

  “...is virtually worthless. We have, apparently, one specimen. I haven’t seen it, but I can’t doubt Vicente’s word that it is what he claims. Once having accepted that, however, it is by no means logical that one should proceed to say that the Underworld is full of beings like this. We still know virtually nothing. We can make no reasonable guess at all as to what might be the dominant species in the Underworld. We have no justification, in fact, for thinking in terms of ‘Dominant species’ at all.”

  “But suppose,” said Emerich, “that it was confirmed that the rats are the dominant species down there. What then?”

  “I refuse to suppose any such thing,” said Ravelvent stubbornly.

  “You are a scientist,” said Emerich. “Very well, let us adopt as a scientific hypothesis the assumption that the Underworld is primarily inhabited by creatures of the rather fearsome type which Vicente has described....”

  “Fearsome?” queried Ravelvent, determined to stop Emerich from loading his questions, if possible.

  “It is fearsome,” said Emerich, definitely. “I can assure you of that. In the photographs we have, it is quiescent, but let us look at the figures. It is rather more than four feet long—or perhaps I should say four feet high, as it walks on two feet rather than four. It has hands and a considerable cranial cavity, big enough—Vicente suggests—to hold a brain of near-human complexity and capability. And we do have, here, the knife with which it was threatening to murder Randal Harkanter when Vicente shot it with an anesthetic dart.”

  Emerich pressed the knife into Ravelvent’s hand, making him inspect it in front of the cameras.

  “You’ll notice,” intervened Soron, “that it testifies to a far higher degree of tehnology extant in the Underworld than any of us could have dared to suggest might exist down there. Are we to believe that this weapon came into the hands of the rat from somewhere else, or is it remotely possible that there exists in the world below a society of rats which is advanced enough to pose a definite threat to human life?”

  Ravelvent was temporarily defeated by the way that
Soron had phrased his question, which suggested all kinds of horrific but tentative possibilities.

  “I don’t know how the rat got his hands on the knife,” said Ravelvent, “but he didn’t make it. I don’t believe this was made in the Underworld at all. I think it was made up here.”

  “Are you suggesting...?” Soron began.

  “No,” said Ravelvent, quickly, “I’m not suggesting that you planted it, or that any member of your expedition took it down there. I’m suggesting that there has, for many centuries—probably dating back to the early days of the Plan—been clandestine dealing between the Overworld and the surface. I don’t know who is involved or why, but I do know that it happens. If you trace the flow of materials as recorded in the cybernet you’ll find that there has been a steady drain. The missing materials must go to the Underworld because there is nowhere else for them to go. That’s what your knife proves. It says nothing at all about the possibilities of rat civilizations. Nothing.”

  Ravelvent settled back in his chair, satisfied that he had turned the entire course of the argument with his revelation. He believed that he had stamped hard on Emerich’s scare story. Emerich, however, was not a man to give up easily.

  “The rat had the knife,” he said, “and was prepared to use it. Whether the object itself came from the Overworld or not does not alter the fact that the rat was possessed of it. If there has, as you say, been a steady supply of materials to the Underworld—a fact of which I was aware, but hesitant to confirm—there can be no doubt that some of these materials are adopted and used by the rats. Does that not suggest that the rats have evolved to the point at which they pose a danger to human beings?”

  “We can’t assume any such thing,” said Ravelvent.

  “But we cannot neglect the possibility?” persisted Emerich.

  There was no answer.

  “In that case,” said Emerich, “isn’t the idea of opening the Underworld—for any purpose whatsoever—a very dangerous one indeed?”

  Ravelvent opened his mouth to reply.

  When the recording had been made, Ravelvent had replied, but at this point the tape was cut short.

  Yvon Emerich appeared, in different clothes, broadcasting live. He explained the program had been cut off because of the strange and terrible event which had swept the world while it was in progress. He assured the people that every effort was being made to find out what had happened and why.

  As soon as it was possible, Emerich assured the world, the explanation would be discovered and a full account of the happening released. In the meantime, live broadcasting would continue, as the anatomy of the phenomenon was explored, and as information came in.

  Emerich himself would not be fronting the broadcast—he wanted to be behind the scenes, sifting the information and deciding how and when it was to be released. Before he handed over to someone else he announced that no deaths or serious injuries had—as yet—been recorded as a result of the phenomenon.

  CHAPTER 46

  “You were warned,” said Ulicon.

  “I was warned,” Heres admitted. “Never mind that now. There’s no time for an orgy of recrimination. You told me it wasn’t finished but I tried to bury it anyway. Eliot’s been trying to stab me in the back ever since. Now it’s blown up. You can go ahead with the back-stabbing if you think that’s what’s called for. But this is serious. It’s no time for petty quarreling.”

  “I accept that,” said Ulicon.

  “All right. Now—you were the one who warned us all that the Magner affair might blow up. Give me an explanation of what happened tonight.”

  “An explanation! How can I? Rafe, I don’t know what happened. What you describe as having happened to you is not what happened to me. You experienced something utterly strange.... I had visions that were starkly clear and quite terrifying. Right now the holo is throwing out all sorts of garbage—people knocked unconscious, mental explosions.... There’s no way of knowing whether there was one event or half a million. How can I possibly give you an explanation until we have some clear idea of how the thing maps out?”

  “We can’t wait,” said Heres. “When we discussed the Magner affair in Close Council, you were the only one ready with some guesses. You were the one with ideas. We need those ideas now. Why do you think I called you? This is a sealed circuit, Enzo, and half the world is at my back. I’ve got to find answers of some kind. Give me something to play with, please! Because if I can’t quell this panic, Heaven only knows where we’ll be come the morning.”

  “All right,” said Ulicon, trying to halt Heres’ flow of words with a gesture. “I’ll tell you what I think. But this is sheer fantasy. It could be nothing like the truth.

  “When I investigated Magner I made the point that the visions only came to him during sleep, but that they weren’t ordinary dreams. I guessed that there was some kind of telepathic link tied in with the sleep process, possibly involving the pons. I guessed that Magner was picking up some kind of leakage from minds in the Underworld. I stand by those guesses.

  “What happened tonight was related, but by no means similar. The visions came to me while I was awake. They not only came, but they stayed. They’ve come into my head and they’ve stuck. That isn’t leakage—this...message...has been driven into my mind with real power behind it. And into yours, and—so far as we know—into every other human mind on the planet. To some, the message was meaningless, to others the impact of receiving it was like a physical blow—just as bright light or loud noise can hurt physically.

  “First point of advice—find someone who got the whole message and got it clear. What I got was a mess of fragments. Maybe that’s what was sent out, but we can’t afford to overlook the possibility that someone is walking around with a complete understanding of what’s going on because he got the content of the broadcast loud and clear. Maybe the word message is all wrong, and what hit us wasn’t a deliberate attempt to communicate. If that’s the case, we have a real problem, because like it or not we have communication. Mind to mind. Imagination to imagination. Whether the human race likes it or not, it has just been awarded telepathy. We might not be able to transmit to one another, or to read one another’s minds, but our minds can be invaded from without. That’s the crucial fact.

  “At the very least, we need a method of defense. We need to be able to screen out anything like this that happens in the future. Because it is going to happen in the future. Magner showed us the writing on the wall and we let it go. Now it’s here. Tomorrow morning, or tomorrow night, it can happen again. It will—if not tomorrow then the day after, or the day after that. This could be the beginning of the greatest thing that ever happened to us—but unless we can understand and control it, then it could be one of the worst

  “Find out what happened, at all costs. Find some singular event at the focal point of this phenomenon which we can correlate with the mental transmission. Find out the entire contents of the transmission. Find out who, or what, sent that message. Find out how, but above all else find out why. Until you know that there’s no way you can promise the people that it isn’t going to happen again every day from now until doomsday. Perhaps you’ll never be able to make that promise, because perhaps it will happen again, and again, every night from now until doomsday.”

  “What did you see?” demanded Heres, after a momentary pause. “Exactly.”

  “It wasn’t exact,” said Ulicon. “I don’t know even a fraction of what I saw. I don’t want to know. All I can give you are the pieces of the jigsaw. I saw the Underworld. I’m sure of that. Not one part of it but many. Not a panoramic view from above but a vast series of images, like still photographs, of many different places. I saw...creatures...people...things. I saw faces that were covered in fur, but not beast faces. I wish I’d seen that rat of Harkanter’s, because it might allow me to be more sure. I saw many things which were like animals, but also like men. I saw one, in particular, that was not like the others—but it, too, was part-animal, part-man. I
saw real men, I think, but their images were confused with painted masks. They seemed too large and utterly savage. The whole thing was somehow out of focus. Not blurred, but wrong. There wasn’t much color, because all the images were dim, but the colors that there were seemed out of balance. All the signals were mixed—it was like looking at an optical illusion...one of those drawings which show impossible things, like staircases going round in a circle, upwards all the way. There was nothing like that in the images, but they gave the same sense of wrongness...wrongness that I couldn’t pin down. It might be the effect of—as it were—seeing with someone else’s eyes, experiencing the world via a different balance of sensory information. It might well be...but I don’t know. I can’t be sure. I don’t know what I was seeing, but I’ll tell you this...it was a vision of Hell...the Hell that Magner put into his book. I can imagine now what that man went through. I understand what he wrote. But if that was a cry for help, then it was the fiercest and most frightening cry imaginable. I don’t believe it was, I think it was Magner who made it into one. That was his interpretation—his way of making sense of it all.”

  “And your way?” prompted Heres. “How do you make sense of it all?”

  “I can’t,” said Ulicon. “Perhaps I never shall. All I’m sure of is the central fact. My mind has been invaded. Someone or something down there in the Underworld can make me hear him inside my head, see as he sees.”

  “Suppose,” said Heres, “that he can hear you. See as you see.”

  “How would I know?” replied Ulicon. “How could I ever know?”

  “Enzo,” said Heres, suddenly becoming the Hegemon again. “I want you to take charge of things within the Movement. Recruit what help you need. The first thing to do is to keep the Councillors calm and silent. I’ll put Luel on to handling Emerich and his crew. Get busy, and get as many people as possible busy. Make out that the entire Movement is a hive of activity, and for Heaven’s sake try to preserve an illusion of competence. Whether we know what we’re doing or not let’s pretend that we have it all under control. Never mind the public—make sure the Council and the Movement believe it. Delegate whatever authority you can. Put everybody in charge of something, even if it’s only putting other people in charge of other things. Create some work, and make sure it’s hard work. Get the real schedule under way, but don’t leave anyone idle, whether they have anything to contribute or not. All right?”