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

by Brian Stableford

  “You don’t know,” said Ravelvent. “You don’t know that at all. This experiment isn’t proof of that theory, isn’t even evidence for it.”

  “We will act upon the assumption that we are right,” said Ulicon. “We will promise the people that there will be no recurrence of the blast. We won’t tell them that everything will be wonderful—the recovery of the instinctive input into the psyche isn’t going to be easy. But what we are doing—what we will say that we are doing—is readapting them to the world. They will accept what we say, unless there is another blast to prove us wrong.”

  “And if there is?”

  “Then what can anyone do? What solution could there be? We can only act upon the assumption that we will survive. If there is another mindblast, if our minds are taken apart and destroyed, then that spells the end. Adapting to that would be far beyond the scope of political action. We must assume that we will win, and we will assure the people that we know we will win. And we will hope that we are telling the truth. Only time will tell.”

  Clea Aron pointed at the image of Joel Dayling on the screen.

  “Do you honestly think that he is any better than Heres?” she asked.

  They all turned to look at the new Hegemon. He was winding up his own version of what Rypeck had said, speaking in clipped sentences, with convinced sincerity and carefully practiced self-assurance.

  “No,” said Ulicon. “Not if you mean ‘Do I think he is a better man.’ In many ways, Rafe and he are alike. But that’s not what matters. What matters is the fact that he can organize some kind of social action which will help to get us out of this mess, whereas Heres no longer could. Heres had worked himself into a blind corner. A trap. A new figurehead was desperately needed. Rypeck tried to persuade Acheron Spiro, before the emergency arose, but Spiro couldn’t have taken Heres’ place. Not as we are now. It needed someone new, someone from outside. Dayling is all we had.”

  “A Eupsychian.”

  Ulicon shrugged. “That doesn’t matter either. The changes which will happen now will render the conflict between Euchronia and its Eupsychian rebels quite meaningless.”

  “I think you overestimate the power we have to change ourselves,” said Ravelvent. “I don’t think that Dayling and his party—whoever his party are—will be able to organize society along the lines you suggest. I think we may well see a breakup of central organization. I think you’ll see other leaders emerging, and—more important—you’ll see mass resignation from the social order. People will simply quit.”

  “We control the cybernet,” said Ulicon. “And while we control the cybernet we control everything. Not only what people do, but what they think and what they are. Your thinking is thousands of years out of date, Abram. Certainly, they’ll opt out. Tomorrow morning, they’ll be flocking to the sanctuaries. But they won’t stay there. How can they? The sanctuaries depend on the cybernet for their existence just as everything else does. In a matter of months, the sanctuaries will be back to their normal transient population, and the people will be working under the new regime, according to its ministrations.”

  “And anyone who objects, no doubt, will be working in the Underworld.” This piece of sarcasm was contributed by Casorati. Ulicon did not favor him with a reply.

  “At least,” said Joth—the first words he had spoken since he had heard Rypeck tell the world that the Underworld had to be saved rather than destroyed—”we are returning to sanity.”

  “If we can find it,” said Ravelvent.

  38.

  Iorga knelt to drink water from the shallow pool surrounded by blocks of cracked cement. The blocks were encrusted with red and yellow lichenous growths, and the water was thick with monads and thin filaments of algae. Huldi threw herself full-length on the ground, leaning over the lip of the pool to splash water into her face.

  The region was hot, and the air heavy and humid. Under his clothing, Iorga was sweating copiously, and both Huldi and Nita were flushed—almost feverish. They were in a clear area, relatively speaking. The buildings forming the framework of the forest were gigantic, but they were well-spaced. In between them, the plants clung to other structures, but none more than a man’s height. Iorga felt very small as he contemplated the vast blocks which reached high into the sky—so high that their roofs seemed almost to touch the stars.

  These reinforced concrete monsters had—in the old world—been faced with glass, but that was all gone now. Only the skeletons remained.

  The life-system had moved into the buildings as well as dressing their exterior walls, and inside each of the structures there would be great communities of organisms on every floor. Every building was a multilayered concrete island.

  Iorga’s ears pricked, searching the damp air for any vestige of vibration. His eyes searched the mottled carpet of fungus. His nose told him that something was wrong, but he searched with his other senses for some kind of confirmation.

  All he could see and hear were the great ghost-moths fluttering around the towers where they swarmed. The unsteady flickering of their vast white wings caught the light and reflected it with a curious stroboscopic effect which constantly drew his eyes only to mislead them. The thin screeching of the moths, in the highest register of his hearing, filled his ears, and any more subtle, lower pitched sounds were lost. Smaller insects, silent in flight, with jeweled, transparent wings, mingled with the ghost-moths in their aerial dance. Some of them were stinging wasps, but they did not seem alarmed by the presence of the three invaders.

  Iorga climbed a low ridge of basidiomycetic fiber, attempting to command a better view of the surroundings, but it would not bear his weight. In supporting himself with his hand he found that the vegetable tissue was rotten inside, swarming with maggots. As he held up his hand to inspect the putrefying gel which stuck to it, flies began to gather around it. He shook off the gel and wiped the moistness from his palm.

  Nita, seeing the suspicion in his attitude, sniffed the air carefully.

  “Fire,” she commented.

  “Cuchumanates,” said Iorga. “They came through the blight ahead of us. These lands are their lands if they are anyone’s. They may attack.”

  The doubt in his mind was clear in his voice. The Cuchumanates were dangerously unpredictable. If they did attack, the fight would be savage—it would be no mere skirmish.

  The safest thing by far was to keep well clear. But the heat did not make traveling easy.

  Huldi caught a hopping insect with a swift movement of her hand, bit into the abdomen, and sucked out the soft part of the creature, then threw the chitinous shell away.

  “Eat,” she said. “While we can.”

  “There!” said Iorga, suddenly, pointing west—the direction they wanted to go. When Nita followed the direction of his arm, she could see nothing, but she knew that the hellkin had detected movement.

  “This way,” said Iorga, reaching down to haul Huldi to her feet. With his head, he indicated that they were to move to the right, into the shadow of one of the monstrous frameworks. Huldi gathered together the food and the weapon she had been carrying, and they all ran across the open space to the overgrown wall.

  As they reached its shelter, an arrow struck the plant flesh above the hellkin’s head, and sank into it with a dull, liquid sound.

  Pushing the others before him, Iorga retreated along the wall. He saw one of the Cuchumanates coming forward at a run, then another. There was no longer any question of hiding—they must escape or kill.

  They found an opening in the wall—what had once been a considerable doorway but which was now reduced to a narrow, oval aperture.

  “Inside,” said Iorga. Nita went through immediately, but Huldi was reluctant. To her, the interior seemed pitch-black, and she had a horror of closed, dark spaces which were certain to be full of biting insects. Her eyes were not so sharp as those possessed by Nita, let alone the cat-eyes of the hellkin. Iorga had to go ahead of her, and then pull her in after him.

  Nita found
the corridor within much wider and taller than the entrance had suggested, but strands of webbing were everywhere. She had to pull the thin, slightly sticky strands away from her face. She could see little save the broad dimensions of the place, but she could hear multifold rustling noises as the denizens of the hall retreated from the intrusion.

  Iorga drew the gun—it was a pistol—that Joth had left with him on his return to the Overworld. Huldi also held a weapon at the ready—a long, stout knife of Heaven-sent metal, but Nita’s best knife was made of bone. Iorga considered giving up his own metal knife, but decided against it.

  He had only a limited quantity of ammunition for the pistol, and when it was empty...it made sense to let the biggest and strongest handle the most effective weaponry.

  The hellkin crouched in the doorway, looking out. The Cuchumanates had decided that caution was required, and they were approaching slowly, hidden by the tangled maze of puffballs and toadstools.

  While he waited, Huldi crouched by his side, crowding him, determined not to move back from the entrance and the weak light of the road of stars.

  Another arrow scored the collar of fungus round the aperture, harmlessly dislodging a piece of rind and carrying it ten or twelve feet into the maw of the cave.

  Then one of the attackers came to her feet and ran forward, bone-tipped spear clutched in both hands and extended before her. Iorga had time to look at the thin face, the skin stretched like tanned pigskin over the sharp cheekbones. He saw the crazy anger in the bloodshot eyes.

  She was no more than five strides away when he fired.

  She had been running forward at a good pace, and she was big and raw-boned, but the bullet nevertheless picked her up off her feet and threw her backwards. It struck below the rib cage, just above the navel, and its flat trajectory carried it clean through her body, blasting out half her gut through the exit hole. As she hit the ground she writhed, as if trying to bounce back to her feet, and though she could not, her arms continued to grope for support. Her convulsive movement broke the soft haft of the spear in two.

  Had Iorga been facing the Men Without Souls or his own kind—perhaps even a pack of harrowhounds, that might have been the end of the battle. The others would have run. But the Cuchumanates, more even than the Ahrima, did not withdraw once they were committed.

  Two arrows flew into the aperture, missing both Iorga and Huldi, who made as much use of the cover as possible. One nicked Nita’s clothing as it went past, and drew blood from a scratch on her arm. Although she was not hurt, the shock of the impact made her draw back, moving sideways to the wall of the corridor, where she pressed her body up against the rusts and the masks. She felt something crawling in her hair, and picked it away with her fingernails, cracking its exoskeleton as she threw it aside.

  Iorga fired again, and missed.

  Two of the attackers were coming at him, and though he was careful to let them come far enough so that he ought not to waste bullets, his aim was not good enough. The pistol was a little unsteady in his fist. As the point of a spear jabbed at his face, he recoiled from the doorway, cocking the gun again. The narrowness of the opening saved him, as the Cuchumanates got in one another’s way trying to come through. Huldi thrust at one, and gashed her leg, while Iorga’s third shot tore a black hole in the other’s left eye. Again, the momentum of the bullet carried the body backwards, and the second attacker was bowled over. Because of the wound pouring blood from her leg she was slow to rise, and Iorga had no difficulty in putting a bullet into her.

  Huldi expected more of the Cuchumanates to be crowding the doorway within seconds, but there were none. Iorga leaned forward to see better, but only one of the attackers was visible, half-hidden by a swollen dendrite. She was notching an arrow to the string of her bow. Iorga dared not fire, because she was too far away for him to be sure of hitting her.

  Nita shouted a wordless warning, and he whirled, to see three or four shadows moving from a distant corner. He fired at them, and they parted as though to let the missile through. He heard it hit a wall behind them and whine as it ricocheted. Realizing that the Cuchumanates knew of—or had discovered—another way in, Iorga moved back, away from the dimly lit aperture.

  “This way,” he hissed, and moved off diagonally across the hallway, toward the darkness where there were other doors. As he heard the Cuchumanates coming at him he sprinted. Nita scuttled alongside him.

  Huldi, meanwhile, could not simply launch out into the blackness. She could not see the darker shadows for which the others were headed. Instead of following directly, she moved along the wall, feeling her way with one hand while the other waved the metal knife in slow horizontal arcs. She felt blind terror, knowing that the Cuchumanates must be able to see her even though she could not see them. But nothing came near to her blade, and nothing ripped at her throat.

  Iorga stumbled, and pitched forward onto a ridged slope—a staircase. He took the skin off the knuckles of his gun hand, but did not lose his grip on the weapon. He started up the stair, with Nita following. After ten or twelve steps he whirled round to look back. The Cuchumanates were well-nigh at the girl’s heels. Steadying his right wrist with his left hand he fired over Nita’s shoulder, once, twice and again. Then the gun was empty, but the Cuchumanates were gone. One was crumpled at the foot of the stairs, screaming in agony, the others had leapt backwards, retreating behind the corners of the opening at the foot of the stairs.

  Iorga pushed Nita, indicating that she must go on upwards. He took advantage of the momentary respite to empty the spent cartridges from the gun and fit a fresh clip. Then he followed, backing up the steps one by one.

  Meanwhile, Huldi had come to a corner and rounded it, and was still moving along, her hand guiding her by touching the wall. She heard a sound, and was sure that at least one of the Cuchumanates was now coming after her. She began to run.

  Then the wall which half-supported her was suddenly no longer there. In reaching to find it she overbalanced, and fell into a yawning, invisible opening.

  Vomit rose into her mouth as she fell, and there was just time to wonder if she would shatter her bones before she smashed into a concrete floor and lost consciousness.

  39.

  The helicopter settled on the flat area at the western edge of the roof of Sisyr’s house. The alien eased himself out of the safety harness and climbed down, ducking away from the fierce airflow stirred up by the decelerating blades.

  The whine of the blades decreased in pitch as he moved away. The police captain followed him out, and then stood for a few moments, waiting until the noise had died down sufficiently for him to speak in a normal tone.

  “The men who were in your house have all reported back in,” he said. “They were told to leave everything as they found it. If there’s any damage, anything missing, let us know. I’m afraid that there’s bound to have been some degree of disturbance. If you need any help....”

  “There is no need,” said the alien. “I have all the time I need.”

  The official looked uncertain for a few seconds, as though he felt that he ought to say something more, but he decided, instead, to retreat from the situation and let Sisyr fade away into his forgotten corner of the Earth. He raised his hand in an odd mock salute, and then clambered back up into the belly of the helicopter.

  The rotor blades were still whirling. The moment the captain was back inside, they began to pick up speed again and the whine began again.

  Sisyr moved back, and then watched the helicopter dance away into the sky, swinging round to head away into a bank of dull gray cloud that was moving in from the north. The alien waited awhile, seeing the snowclouds filling half the sky, and then three-quarters. The first thick flakes were tumbling out of the sky, settling in his clothing, before he finally turned away and walked slowly to the door.

  Sisyr’s house was very large by the standards of Euchronia. Through well hidden in the higher slopes of a mountain range, with the towering islands of the old surface all
around, it was an imposing sight when glimpsed from the flat platform plain below. It suited its ancient surroundings, like an ancient castle or palace.

  For the most part, the houses used by Euchronia’s citizens were small, rarely accommodating more than a handful of people. There was no reason why a citizen of Euchronia should not have as much space as he required, but the acquisitive habits of the prehistoric ages had not, for the most part, been recovered by the people of the new world. There were many collectors in Euchronia, but they tended to be selective and discriminating. The old compulsion to accumulate for the sake of accumulation, so common among the prehistoric leisured classes, had been one of the things frowned upon by the Movement in its earliest days.

  Sisyr, however, had provided for himself a vast dwelling with a multitude of rooms. His priorities were rather different from those of mortal men. The scope of his projects and pastimes had to be so much the greater.

  He made his way to a room with one wall made completely of glass—a great window positioned so that he could stand by it and see the extent of the mountain slopes on either side of him, and beyond them the great cornfields which stretched for hundreds of miles across the platform, tended only by machines. Today, though, he did not stand, but brought up to the window a high-backed chair. He got food and drink from the cybernet, and he seated himself to take his meal in the shadow of the storm which gathered about his home.

  It was not a violent storm, by the standards of the region, but there was some thunder and lightning, and the snow drove hard against the glass wall and tried to stick, to build a curtain of white which would close out the world.

  As he finished his meal, he heard someone enter the room by a door behind him. He did not look round, but simply waited. He was aware of the intruder walking across the carpeted floor, to stand just behind the chair.

  “I’ve never seen snow,” said a voice. “That’s rather strange, isn’t it? So much happens in the world that we remain unaware of. For instance, I never knew about the mountains. I suppose, in my brain, I must have stored the fact that some mountain peaks from the old world project beyond the platform, but I really never thought about it. It never occurred to me that some of the Underworld is actually above the Overworld. Pieces of the prehistoric past. Is there, perhaps, a lost race of Second Dark Age people lurking somewhere nearby?”