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

by Brian Stableford

  “That’s all here,” said Ulicon, referring to a printout in front of him. “We wonder if any of these things may have had some effect on the creature quite apart from the purpose for which it was given. If that were the case, which of these might it be?”

  “That’s ridiculous,” said Soron. “The only substance that it wouldn’t meet in its own environment is the anesthetic cocktail. The effect that had was perfectly obvious. It worked as it should. Certainly, there might have been side effects that don’t occur in humans, but they’d be organic, metabolic effects. How could an anesthetic give the thing the ability to teleport itself?”

  “I don’t know,” said Ulicon, “but something did.” Soron shook his head.

  “It may have been an innate ability that was simply triggered by the drug,” persisted Ulicon. “If that’s so we need to know what the trigger was. Now an anesthetic acts on the brain—it causes lack of consciousness. The drugs in the mixture act in slightly different ways—some suppress neural activity, others can have slight psychedelic properties. Our only method of trying to find a likely candidate is logic—this isn’t something we can play about with. We must be sure at the outset that you didn’t administer a different kind of sedative at some point, or any other kind of drug. Are you certain that your list is complete?”

  “Absolutely,” said Soron. “The only thing the rat had except for those drugs is water.”

  “Water?”

  “We let it regain semi-consciousness a couple of times. It drank a lot of water—those sedatives can give you a burning thirst, you know.”

  Ulicon said nothing. A pause grew and extended.

  “What’s the matter?” said Soron.

  “Nothing. Just a thought. Thanks, Vicente. That’s all I wanted to know.”

  “It’s a wild goose chase,” said Soron. “Believe me. You’re on the wrong track.”

  Ulicon switched off the circuit. He scratched his chin, and murmured: “Eureka.”

  23.

  While Nita slept, she dreamed. She had always dreamed, and each time she slept there had always been a time when the dreams were unnaturally deep, and unnaturally real. In these deep dreams the shadow of her Gray Soul was ever-present. Sometimes, it would talk to her, but on most occasions it was content to wait. There was something valuable, something inexpressively pleasant, in simply being together, in meeting and almost touching. They never could touch, because of the interface which lay between them, the surface of one mind within another.

  The closeness of dreams was something which affected consciousness only transiently. To retain an awareness of the experience special measures had to be taken. The priests of the Children of the Voice were able to participate in the communion more or less at will, by the aid of mental discipline. The others generally needed drugs to heighten their awareness, to give them more freedom within their minds and in the inner space delimited by their minds. Without the pulp and the gum prepared by the priests and issued at the Communion of Souls, Nita and the common people among the Children of the Voice remained consciously unaware of the experience of Soul-nearness to a considerable extent. Nita was always aware that there was more to her inner life than she could remember or command, that there were worlds beyond the narrow fiction which she constructed and called her self. This mystical aspect of her inner life was continually reinforced by the fragments of experience which remained when her deep dreams dissipated and her mind returned to the surface of consciousness. Sometimes, one such fragment of memory would survive intact—a flake of secret reality, a rivet of insight—and would continue to haunt her waking mind thereafter, its meaning perpetually out of reach but its significance sharp and clear.

  So it was when, without warning, Camlak came to her in her dream.

  He was often present in her dreams, of course. He was always in her mind. But this time, while she slept very deeply, her body and mind exhausted by the long flight from the death that was devouring the blacklands, it was the real Camlak who came to her. He was with the Gray Soul, beyond the interface. She could not quite reach out and touch him, but she could see him, in a strangely shadowed way, and she heard his words.

  When she woke again, committing herself totally to the external world, to the self she had created for facing that particular aspect of infinity, she could not remember his speech in full. The words he had used could not be seized and held by her waking mind—they ran through its crevices like quicksilver. But the meaning remained with her, unclear, but nevertheless tangible...memorable...real....

  He had spoken to her not of a world, but of worlds. He had spoken of bodies becoming shadows, of minds becoming liquid creatures unconfined by shape and dimension, creatures into which time dissolved and flowed. He had spoken of clouded mountains holding everlasting sunset, of white oceans like liquid ashes, of darkness and light, of.... She lost the images even as she tried to recall them. In her world, they made no sense. In her words, they had no meaning. Only within the tissue of the dream had they been able to become real, just for a few moments. The concepts were beyond the boundaries of her own being, outside the horizons of her mind.

  But what reality could not snatch away from her was the assurance that Camlak was alive, that the Overworld had not destroyed him, that somehow he had transcended even Heaven and Hell.

  24.

  “I came as soon as I learned what had happened,” said Rypeck. “I was shocked. Please believe me when I tell you that if it were only within my power...this is a terrible thing. They simply do not realize what they have done.... What they are doing.”

  Sisyr did not react in any way to Rypeck’s obvious distress. His hands were no longer manacled—that symbolic gesture had proved quite pointless, and Heres had directed that the offensive objects should be removed. But the alien was still held in the featureless room—an absolute captivity, in a world which relied so totally on its electrical senses, where life was conducted and mediated by mechanical extensions of the hand and brain.

  As the silence lengthened, Rypeck added: “I’m sorry.”

  “The crisis will pass,” said Sisyr. “This is a transient thing.”

  “They are lost,” said Rypeck, sitting down. His body seemed to fold up as he relaxed himself—perhaps overrelaxed himself. He was tired. “They have no idea how to react or what to do next. They feel an unreasonable urgency which simply cannot be assuaged. I don’t think they will harm you.

  Sisyr said nothing.

  “We talked about this,” said Rypeck. “Such a short time ago. I asked you what would happen if the Movement asked your help again. We talked about the consequences of action and the consequences of inaction. Your answers seemed to me to be unclear.”

  “Within your contexts,” said the alien, “they were unclear. They still are.”

  “But there was one thing that you said,” Rypeck mused. “You said that while we saw two worlds, you only saw one. You saw Earth, Underworld and Overworld, as an integrated whole. What do you see now? A world tearing itself apart? That, I think, is how I am beginning to see it. A world involved in the single-minded business of self-destruction.”

  “There is no self-destruction,” said Sisyr softly. “Only self-repair.”

  “Repair?”

  “Self-change, if you prefer.”

  Rypeck shook his head. He wore a bitter smile. “We have never preferred self-change. We preferred stability. Total order. The state of parasitism. That was our Utopian dream. We still cling to it. We prefer self-satisfaction, self-sterilization...the homogeneity of life.”

  “Something,” said the alien, “which can be all too easy to find.”

  The remark seemed to Rypeck to be unnaturally cryptic. He looked hard at Sisyr.

  “What must you think of us?” he said. “As you look out upon us from your lofty heights of eternity. Are we ants surrendering everything to the greater glory of the anthill, unaware that the land where our universe exists is about to be plowed up, drowned by a tidal wave, swallowed up b
y the Earth? Is that what you see? Is all our human vanity so utterly ridiculous?”

  Sisyr shook his head.

  “How do you see us?” demanded Rypeck. “You have seen us through eleven thousand years. You have seen us pour our lives, our being, into the construction of this almighty metal anthill. You have helped us find and use the materials with which to make it fulfill our dreams. To me, Euchronia is everything. It is my universe—the past when Euchronia did not exist is to me unimaginable, composed of dreams. But you know how little that is. You have dabbled in the building of my world. It has been a mere pastime, the tiniest fraction of your life. To me, it means everything, to you, almost nothing. Tomorrow will be the end of our world, but your world is infinite, eternal. It faces no crises, no climacticon. Do we seem to you to be absurd?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “It is true. Believe me, I am far more involved in your world, in your affairs, than you imagine. This Earth is not my toy, not merely a momentary distraction. I am not a god, despite the fact that I will not die. You read too much into that simple fact. Perhaps your people mean no more to me than the Children of the Voice, but they mean no less. You are real, you are human. You are so like me in so many respects, so unlike in others—but I see the like as well as the unlike. Please believe me when I say that I care about what is happening to you and to your world. But I cannot help in the way that Heres understands help. If there is any kind of salvation, you must find it yourselves. There is nothing I can do.”

  Rypeck’s eyes played over a white wall, as if searching for some tiny crack to distort its smoothness, its emptiness.

  “I believe you,” he said.

  “Thank you,” replied the alien.

  “Is there any possible salvation?” asked the human.

  “I cannot know,” said Sisyr. “In your terms, I simply do not know what salvation is.”

  “The survival of the Overworld,” said Rypeck. “The peace, the stability, the safety of our lives.”

  “Perhaps that can happen,” said the alien. “For now. But is that salvation? For your children’s children, forever and ever, is that salvation?”

  “It’s what we believe in.”

  “Beliefs change,” said Sisyr. “They can never be constant. Don’t you find that there always has to be something new to believe in, and that the beliefs you have are steadily eroded away?”

  “I don’t know,” said Rypeck. “Nobody does.”

  25.

  “There’s a barrier across the road,” reported the spokesman for the party Germont had sent on across the bridge. “It’s just beyond the crest of the hill. Not half a mile. It extends to either side in a rough semicircle, and ends up in the dense vegetation on the slope itself, over there, and there. It doesn’t look like a barricade from here, but I think they’ve dumped stuff in between the clumps of vegetation. Once we’re across the river, we’re effectively hemmed in. Water behind us and the wall on all three sides. The barrier’s all of a mile and a half long—it isn’t something that was thrown up overnight. This is where they intend to stop us all right.”

  “How close did you get?” Germont demanded.

  “Just close enough to see. We weren’t about to go up and say hello.”

  “Did you see the rats?”

  “No. But they were there. I could feel it. They’re behind that barrier, I’ll swear it.”

  “What’s the barrier made of?”

  “What passes for wood hereabouts, I think. The same sort of stuff that stands up straight on these slopes. It’s high, but it can’t be strong. The trucks would go through it like a knife. I guess.”

  “Then what’s it for? If it’s that soft it won’t stop bullets?”

  The spokesman shrugged. “To hide behind, I guess. Maybe it’s the best they could do. Perhaps there’s a ditch behind it—perhaps they hope we’ll crash through and cripple the vehicles. What are we going to do?”

  “Tell Dascon,” snapped Germont. “Let’s see if he has any ideas.”

  He went back to the communications panel, and relayed to Dascon exactly what the scout had told him.

  Dascon was unimpressed. “You have the fire-power,” he said. “Tear the barricade apart. Blast it out of the way.”

  “You wouldn’t like to come down here and do it yourself?” said Germont.

  “You’re making a fool of yourself,” replied the Councilor. “There’s no need to be frightened of a lot of half-animal savages. I know you’ve lost men already, but that has no bearing upon the present situation. Leave a truck to hold the bridge, if you want your rear protected and an escape route assured.”

  “Thanks,” said Germont. “Just stay close to that screen. You can watch through the cameras. At least, if anything does go wrong, you’ll know what it is.”

  “I’m watching,” said Dascon, his voice smooth, showing no trace of irritation because of Germont’s bitterness.

  By means of the camera eye on the front of the truck, Dascon watched as Germont’s truck ventured on to the makeshift bridge, and lumbered across the slow-moving river to the opposite bank. As it ascended the hill Germont ordered the searchlight and the machine gun manned, and Dascon watched the light pick out the crown of the hill as the truck rode up the slope. He heard Germont give instructions for Spurner to stay with the tail-end truck on the north side of the river.

  In a matter of minutes the armored vehicle created the rise, and then Dascon saw the wall—just a loose assemblage of dead, dry vegetable matter piled up in a long, straggling line which arced away to present a concave arc to the lorries as they changed gear and sped forward. The lights from the other trucks joined Germont’s searchlight, scanning the wall for signs of the enemy.

  And then the wall became a wall of flame. At least a dozen lights, maybe more, were applied simultaneously. Either the material of the barricade had been soaked with some flammable liquid, or the dry stalks were very combustible indeed, because once started the flames sprang up with considerable eagerness.

  The truck braked.

  “Back off,” commanded Germont. “Back off and let it burn itself out.”

  The vehicle was thrown into reverse, and the mechanical eye through which Dascon saw retreated steadily. The ribbon of flame extending across the viewfield seemed rather futile—a ridiculous gesture of defiance. But the eye was fixed. It looked forward, and it was locked into the frontal stare. As the truck pulled back to the crest of the hill, Dascon could see only the pall of thick, oily smoke that was already blotting out the electric stars beyond the barrier. But he heard

  Germont’s cry of anguish, and—though no words came to him—he guessed what had happened.

  The Shaira had set fire to the river. The water was polluted, loaded with oil and alcohol. The scum on the surface was not vegetable, but mineral.

  And Germont’s trucks were trapped, ringed by fire. The fire could not burn for long—it would be a fast flare and little more. But the circle was tilted by the slope of the hill. As the air within the ring rose the hot gases from the surface of the river would be sucked inwards, up the slope. Inside the trucks, the men would have their own supply of oxygen, but the armored walls of the trucks would become red-hot in a matter of moments as the firestorm raged around them. If they got out, they would burn and choke. If they stayed in, they would be cooked.

  All Dascon could see was the great cloud of smoke billowing over the crest of the hill. He was forced to cut out the sound that Germont’s microphone was picking up. He simply could not stand to listen to it.

  26.

  “There’s no way to prove what you say,” said Rypeck.

  “No way at all,” agreed Ulicon. “But it fits. It’s an answer which fits the question, and it’s the only one we have which does. The water which we drink is recycled—not because we’re short of water, but in order to conserve the i-minus drug. The drug has to be constantly supplied because it is excreted so easily, and so the supply is—to all
intents and purposes—a closed circuit. The i-minus drug is not expelled into the Underworld with our waste except in the most minute quantities, and it is so easily degraded by strong alkali that virtually none of it will have got into the Underworld life-system. The concentration in our water is quite high—on the order of several parts per million. Quite enough to affect the creature if it drank a pint or two of Overworld water.”

  “We have no way of knowing what effect it might have had.”

  “But we have. The drug acted on the creature exactly as it was designed to act. It cut out the instinctive input into his dreaming. And left what? The input from his conscious mind—the memories and visual images which were the content of the telepathic broadcast, plus the other input—the input from elsewhere, from the Gray Soul. By cutting the instinctive input into the dream state, the i-minus agent made possible a closer contact between the creature and the thing which it called a soul than ever before. That’s what made it possible for the creature to disappear—to go wherever it went, into the space where the Soul is.”

  “You think this Gray Soul is a real being, not just a mental archetype?” queried Rypeck.

  “I do. It fits. The rat people are in telepathic contact with other beings, but the contact is blurred by the fact that it takes place in the same bodies within the brain that are involved with dream-sleep—the focus of the whole thing is probably the pons. Harkanter and Soron, quite unknowingly, made it possible for the creature to make much better use of that telepathic linkage.”

  Rypeck nodded slowly. “It’s all very speculative,” he said.

  “But if it’s true,” persisted Ulicon, “then we have grounds for thinking—at least for hoping—that there won’t be a recurrence. Without the i-minus agent, the rat people might not be able to effect a similar contact. We might be safe—at least for a time. We have time to think, time to adjust, time even to adapt, if we must. Surely we can stop this mad panic!”