A Glimpse of Infinity: The Realms of Tartarus, Book Three

by Brian Stableford

  All had heard Camlak’s scream and knew intuitively that something of moment had happened at that moment. They were ready to hear—and so were the Gray Souls.

  Chemec warned of the coming of the men from Heaven—of the impending destruction of the world. This was prophecy. He described things which he had seen, and things which were yet to be seen. What he said was true.

  He did no more than this—his function was to spread the word, and no more. His function was to alert the Children of the Voice in Shairn. Others took his warnings beyond Shairn, into other parts of the world. While Chemec prepared for the uniting of a nation, others made way for the uniting of a race.

  And in all parts of the world, while the warning was carried, the priesthood of the Children of the Voice, in rapport with their Gray Souls, attempted to decide and define what role the Children of the Voice were to play in the coming climax of their world.

  PART 2

  10.

  Everyone in Euchronia was familiar with the game called Hoh. It was played everywhere. Passionate believers in Euchronian ideology tended to be passionate Hoh players as well. Rafael Heres and Eliot Rypeck were both expert players. Perhaps strangely, some of the most dedicated opponents of political Euchronianism were also devoted to the game. Thorold Warnet was one. There was, however, a sharp difference between the kinds of strategy that the opposing groups favored.

  If it could be said that there was a single key to Euchronian civilization—one social institution which could help one to understand the way that the Overworld society worked—then that key had to be Hoh.

  All games are, to some extent, analogues of life situations. One can learn a great deal about relationships within a society from a study of the way popular games are staged and used by the members of the society, and from the kind of encounter mimicked by the rules of such games. The simplest games are redistribution-of-capital games, usually governed by sheer chance. Such games become complicated by the addition of player-options rather than by the introduction of manipulative skill. Other games which usually exist alongside these are war games, in which chance is minimized and skill becomes paramount. All games of this class are zero-sum games, in which one player’s gain is another’s loss. There are other kinds of games—accumulation or construction games—which are not zero-sum. In a society dominated by zero-sum concerns, this class is primarily represented by one-player games rather than group-competitive games.

  The game of Hoh was a complex derivation of a much older game which consisted of locating dots on a matrix, and establishing rules determining conditions under which they “die,” “survive,” or “reproduce.” As these rules are followed, the population of dots passes through a number of “generations” and—ultimately—one of several results is obtained. All the dots may be removed from the board; a pattern may form which reproduces itself exactly at each generation; a stable cycle of patterns may result; or a pattern may be formed which reproduces itself and simultaneously changes location so that it “migrates” across the matrix. This game is an elementary simulation of a population attempting to become viable. The rate of success or failure depends on two things: the rules governing death, survival and reproduction; and the initial pattern established on the matrix. Player participation is introduced if the player is permitted to “move” dots at each generation, according to options regulated by further rules. In its basic form, this is a one-player game. It becomes a multiple-player game when more than one population is introduced into the matrix, “competing” for available space. Again, new rules have to be introduced to govern interspecific interaction as well as infraspecific. All the original outcomes are preserved with respect to either population. Several different “target situations” are possible: players may attempt to stabilize their own population and exterminate all others, or the players may collaborate so that all the populations become stable and viable. If “winning” is defined as stabilizing the particular population under a player’s control, then the game may have only one winner, or no winners at all, or all the players might win.

  In Hoh, the factor of evolution is added to the competition situation, providing for populations to change their properties as defined by the rules. The ability to do so, like the ability of the population to redeploy itself at each generation, is controlled by player-options.

  The Hoh player, therefore, has a number of options open to him strategically. He may direct his efforts toward the situation in which his population alone survives, or toward a situation in which more than one—perhaps all—the populations survive. In so doing, he may endeavor to alter the properties of his own pieces with respect to one another and to other pieces in order to make them more efficient at survival or reproduction, or “killing” pieces of other species. The rules are complex, and if the matrix on which the game is played is large, a computer is required to alter the pattern at each generation.

  The Euchronian Movement was founded in order to stabilize the human population of Earth and to provide a social pattern for the resultant society. The Euchronian Movement, in effect, played a game analogous to Hoh in reality, and the Euchronian Plan by which a platform was built to cover the entire land surface of the planet, was a sequence of moves—a strategy—for such a game. The fact that a game like Hoh should have developed within Euchronian society to the preeminence which it eventually acquired was an eloquent testimony to the success of Euchronian ideology as a socially cohesive force. It was highly significant that political polarization in Euchronian society, during and after the completion of the Plan, should be correlated with different approaches to the game rather than with the evolution of alternative classes of game.

  The dedicated Euchronians always played Hoh by strategies which would allow the maximum possible number of players to succeed in stabilization: they aimed toward the situation in which all populations became viable. This is not any easy way to play. Even if all the players work toward this end, the element of competition is not removed from the game, because it is built into the rules governing interactions. On a small matrix, it may be almost impossible to discover a situation in which four or five populations may collaborate in a stable situation, and even if one such situation exists, it may be impossible for any sequence of moves to bring that situation into being. In the eventuality of one or more players adopting a different strategy, the problems become complex indeed, as such players must be forced to conform, or be eliminated—problems of this type become inordinately complicated.

  The Eupsychians who played Hoh almost invariably attempted to win outright—that is, to be the only winner. When Eupsychians played one another, the game was usually straightforward, and when Euchronians played together it was moderately so. The most interesting games, however, were played by Euchronians and Eupsychians. These games were the most difficult and the most challenging. Strangely, however, they took place rarely, even among the most expert players. Certainly Rafael Heres would never have sat down to play Hoh with anyone who was liable to employ Eupsychian strategies—not because he was afraid of the competition, but because he felt such strategies were contrary to the spirit in which the game ought to be played. Eupsychians used the same logic.

  A Eupsychian would argue that Euchronians played toward an end that was “unnatural.” They would cite the biological principle known as Gause’s axiom, which states that two species in competition cannot coexist—one must always drive out or eliminate the other. The Euchronians worked toward an end that was perfectly possible and perfectly legitimate under the rules of Hoh, but the Eupsychian would nevertheless feel that they were “cheating” with respect to some more abstract principle.

  A Euchronian, on the other hand, would argue that Eupsychian players were both narrow-minded and simple-minded, and deliberately unintelligent. He would point out that if the moves were made at random, then Gause’s axiom would probably hold up in virtually every instance. But, he would say, the whole point of having intelligent, calculating players was to rise above th
e random situation: to control the game, and to force the situations which would not otherwise be probable. In nature, he would claim, Gause’s axiom might have some validity, but when applied analogically to the game of Hoh, it ought to exist in order to be broken. Hoh was a game played with the aid of computers—it was the game of a highly advanced technological society—and it hardly made sense, to a Euchronian, that it should be played according to the law of the jungle.

  It was, however, noticeable that when Euchronians and Eupsychians did sit down to participate mutually in a game of Hoh, the Euchronians—unless they were vastly superior players—could not reach the ideal target situation. At best, they could usually eliminate the Eupsychians by collective action in violation of their own principles, and then reorder their affairs to assure that they themselves were collaborative winners. In most instances, the Euchronians had to outnumber the Eupsychians considerably in order to stay in the game.

  Significantly, an inordinately high percentage of games in which both Euchronians and Eupsychians participated, regardless of relative numbers, ended in the situation where no population was able to become viable. Normally, therefore, when Euchronians and Eupsychians played together, everybody lost.

  11.

  Yvon Emerich took pride in two things: his independence and his showmanship. Under normal circumstances, he had every opportunity to assert both these aspects of his character through his work in the holovisual media. Since the crisis, however, he had been removed utterly and totally from all assertive situations.

  Formerly, he had been a kind of opposition that the Hegemony of the Euchronian Movement found advantageous to themselves. Emerich was anti-Council and anti-Heres, but he was also anti-everything else. He influenced opinion without controlling it in any way. He was a noncreative thinker, purely destructive in argument. He voiced perpetual objections to Council policy and behavior, but provided no alternatives. While he represented the voice of dissatisfaction, the Council was always secure, because there was never any pressure upon them to act differently, merely a perpetual challenge to justify the action which they took. Emerich gave resentment a focus, directing it away from channels where it might have become a threat to the power of the Movement. Though the society of the Euchronian Millennium was by no means the perfect world which had always been the Movement’s promise, and though social unrest was evident in a hundred ways, the only real opposition to the Euchronian Movement—the Eupsychian party—had never gained a place on the Council in an election. Most people thought of Emerich as a Eupsychian, or at least a sympathizer, but he was by no means the kind of mouthpiece the party wanted or needed. From their point of view the association in the public mind was a handicap.

  When the “invasion” of the Overworld had taken place, however, Emerich had become a luxury that the Council could no longer afford. They wanted no challenge to Heres’ proposals—they did not even want it spoken aloud that the proposals (and the objectives) could be challenged. Heres wanted total control of the electronic media during the period of crisis, because after saving the world, he had to save Euchronia, and he knew full well that even if he succeeded in the former purpose, the latter might well be impossible. But in deposing Emerich from his position of preeminence he made himself a very determined enemy. From Emerich’s point of view, necessity was no excuse for the injury and the insult which had been done to him.

  The Eupsychians wasted no time whatsoever in taking advantage of this situation.

  “The Movement,” Thorold Warnet told him, “is finished. It’s clinging to power now simply because there seems to be nothing to take its place. We must organize something to take its place. In order to do so, we need control of the cybernet, including communications.”

  “You want me to join the revolution?” said Emerich bluntly.

  “Not quite,” said Warnet. “We want you to stop the revolution—the revolution of the people against this crazy trap they find themselves in. At the moment, there’s virtually nothing keeping the world running. Every citizen of Euchronia’s Millennium is on the verge of insanity. Every one of us has been led to accept that Euchronia has absolute control. Education says so, and history says so. The Movement did the impossible, and built a new world out of the ruins of the old. We have all been taught that Euchronia is omnipotent, that society is stable and secure and completely ordered. That’s all been wiped out in a single night. All it took was the revelation that something exists which Euchronia can’t handle, can’t control, can’t bring under the aegis of its total order and stability. All that Euchronia can do is destroy—if it can even do that. But the destruction itself testifies to the redundancy of Euchronian belief. If Euchronia is omnipotent, it shouldn’t have to react this way. The destruction of the Underworld may take care of the problem, but it’s not an answer. There is no answer. The answer is for someone else to provide—not the Movement. We can provide one. What we need is someone to deliver it.”

  “Crap!” said Emerich. “As long as I can remember you people have been spouting garbage like that. It means nothing. If you want to talk to me, talk sense. You want Heres out, fine. But don’t tell me why—tell me how. What are you going to do, and what the hell makes you think it might work?”

  Warnet felt like laughing at the short, plump man who contrived to know everything by refusing to admit anything. But Emerich was right. Exquisite analyses of the philosophical complexion of the situation, correct or not, were meaningless. The important thing was to discover a program of action. Unfortunately, the argument between the Eupsychians and the Euchronian Movement had been so long confined to philosophical argument that prescriptions for social action were not easy to come by.

  “We know what we want to achieve,” said Warnet. “The trouble is coordinating our efforts. We know how and where to act in order to take control out of Heres’ hands into our own. What we don’t have is a way of keeping control—of preventing complete chaos. It’s no good taking the reins of government if the people react by becoming ungovernable. Somehow, we have to make them trust us. You’re the only man in the world who can do that, because you’re the only one who knows how. If you collaborate with us, I think it can be done—I think we can find a way. If not, then I think the entire structure of society may break down, and we’ll have no government at all. In a world like ours, that would be total disaster. If a mechanized society doesn’t function as a unit, then it will stop functioning altogether.”

  “All very fine,” said Emerich. “But what about the Underworld?”

  “Perhaps we can destroy it,” said Warnet. “But we may have to come to terms with it. We’re not committed. Heres is. That’s all the difference there can be.”

  12.

  When the last of the armored trucks had passed, the three came out of the forest and stood on the apron. The carpet of plants had been so badly cut and crushed by the tires that the ancient road surface was exposed here and there.

  As the roar of the engines died away into the distance, the return of the silence seemed momentarily unnatural. The silence was real: nothing moved within the forest, no moths or birds called as they fluttered, even the whisper of the Overworld was still in this region.

  “The road leads to Heaven,” said Huldi, her eyes still fixed on the smear of light which marked the horizon where the trucks had gone.

  “Perhaps,” said Iorga.

  Nita looked up, into the sky, to the roof of the world in which the stars were set. It seemed so very high above the world beneath. The dull gleam of the nearest pillars, set well back from the road yet still managing to catch a little of the starlight, seemed to stretch a long way. The pillars had always seemed to Nita to be as tall as anything could be, to set a limit to the tallness which anything could achieve. And yet the road could go to Heaven. Iorga had told her that he had seen mountains whose slopes went as far as the roof, and perhaps further. And in places the Overworld sagged, extending itself deep into the world beneath, at places like the metal wall. That the road
went to Heaven even seemed to her to be some justification of the fact that it extended across hundreds of miles of blackland. It stood to reason that a road to Heaven would be a long road and a hard road, and one not easily followed. The blackland must be the borderland—the barrier-land—between the world which Shairn shared and the world from which Joth had come. That there was a road across the border, through the barrier, seemed to her to be significant. Everyone in Shairn knew of the road of stars, but no one, so far as she knew, was aware of where it went, or had ever attempted to follow it. It had been a challenge the Shaira had refused. But perhaps it was for the Shaira, so that those with the curiosity and the courage might be able to gain the sight of Heaven that her father had always wanted. Perhaps the road had been waiting for the Shaira—waiting since the beginning of time.

  The alternative possibility—that the road existed not to permit the Shaira access to Heaven, but to permit the men of the Overworld access to Hell—did not occur to her. In her view, the men from the world above must have many ways of descending into the Tartarean realms. Logically, it was passage in the other way which would be difficult and hazardous.

  They continued on their way, without speaking. They talked more between themselves now than they had previously, but they talked mostly when they rested to eat and sleep. They spoke about themselves, told things that they knew, and recalled images from the past. They did it without questions, because none of them was habituated to questions. But they all remembered Joth, who had been saturated with them. It was really his questions that they were answering, still.

  They did not know how far they had come into the black-land, nor how far they might have to go before they reached some kind of a destination. But they kept on going, and they would continue for as long as it took to get to wherever they were going. There was never any temptation to give up and go back, because they were never conscious of the time that was being absorbed by the journey. As they were now, they were in passage, and they might have set out a moment before or a hundred years. The end of the journey might be just outside the blur which limited their sight, or they might be traveling forever, until they died. Such possibilities never came into their minds. Once they had accepted a purpose, they continued until the situation changed and events deflected them from their course.