The Face of Heaven

by Brian Stableford

  In completing a study of Heres’ character it must be noted that he was not a good leader. In many ways he was not a leader at all. He had charisma, and commanded a good deal of respect, but he was not very efficient. He was clever—but like a driver who takes his corners late he needed to be clever. He was not really good because he was not really safe. The Magner affair illustrates this. While others were worrying Heres was merely observing. It would not occur to him to act decisively at this stage. He had every confidence that if things got worse he could bring off a mental riposte of startling elegance, but the fact remains that if another man were in control the problem might not have been allowed to develop in the way it did. Many men close to him were aware of this failing in the Hegemon’s character, but there was nothing, really, that they could do about it.

  Except worry.

  Chapter 28

  Huldi’s reception in Stalhelm was a poor one. The Children of the Voice, especially those who could be termed neighbors of Ermold, harbored no affection whatsoever for the Men Without Souls, despite the fact that some of the things which enriched their lives came from Walgo.

  When Camlak brought her back, not as a captive for ransom but as a fugitive seeking protection, the women of the village were amazed, if not appalled. The women had lived long by Yami’s ways, which were hard ways. Life as they knew it tended to be ruled by the principle: if in doubt—kill. Camlak made it known that Huldi had killed one of Walgo’s fighting men, and that she hated Ermold as virulently as any Shairan, but those were not reasons which the women would accept as sufficient to permit Huldi the freedom of Stalhelm. Hellkin were welcome enough in the village, and there had been times when Men Without Souls passed freely in and out of the gate—as they undoubtedly did in the villages of western Shairn. But the women were ruled by memory and by habit, and Camlak’s choice did not rest easily with them. Camlak had always been something of an enigma.

  The Old Man’s son installed Huldi in his own house when it was clear that she would not be accommodated elsewhere.

  There she was made welcome, after a fashion, by Camlak’s daughter (by the woman Xyli) Nita. Camlak’s present woman, Sada, objected to the intrusion in no uncertain terms, but dared not show her displeasure in full measure while Camlak was present. Eventually, however, Camlak went to confer with Yami and the elders in the long house, and some of the spite was allowed out.

  After a few insults Sada left to work and to talk with the other village women, but Nita stayed. She was old enough now to work, and should, perhaps, have been out in the fields, but she enjoyed a certain latitude by virtue of being kin to the Old Man.

  Nita was fascinated by Huldi. In the present troubled times she had never actually seen a woman of the Soulless Ones. She had never been close to a living Man at all, though she had seen plenty of warriors’ heads brought home to adorn the skull-gate. She was amazed to discover how tall the stranger was. One got no real idea of size from a distance (and none at all from skulls). She could not imagine that the girl really needed so much body to support a head which did not seem unduly massive.

  Nita had heard from the women that the inhabitants of Walgo were child-eating giants only one step removed from the ultimately horrifying Ahrima, but Nita had always been ready to discredit such talk because it lacked Camlak’s endorsement. Everyone knew that the old women lied about almost everything. The sheer size of Huldi was enough to keep her suspicions awake in some degree, but for the most part Nita’s attitude to the newcomer was not unfriendly.

  Huldi squatted in a corner when Camlak left her, ready to defend herself if necessary, but she relaxed once Sada had gone, and discovered that she was very tired. The elation which had followed her success in winning free of Ermold was evaporated by now, and she was afraid. It was all very well to think of running away to Shairn while Ermold had her on the end of a leash, but the fact was something else entirely. She was alone now, with no idea of what she was or what was going to happen to her. She had to pin her faith on Camlak because there was no alternative, but she could not possibly know the degree to which that faith might or might not be justified. The only refuge from fear which was immediately available was sleep, and to sleep she went, while Nita sat and played with a handful of sticks in the opposite corner of the room.

  Later, Yami came in—without Camlak—to look at her. No sooner had he crossed the threshold than Sada was behind him.

  “You should kill her,” said Sada.

  Yami did not reply, but simply stood there, looking at the girl with his pale, rheumy eyes. Sada dared to let loose a short, hissing sound which expressed something of her contempt for the man who was old in fact as well as in title. It was time that he was replaced. She had hoped Camlak would do it, but by now she was half-convinced that Camlak would not even if he could. She was disillusioned, and felt betrayed by circumstance. She had grown to hate Camlak, considering him only half a man. Camlak tolerated her anyway, which made her conviction all the stronger.

  Yami looked at Huldi, and he wondered. He did not understand. He had reared Camlak to be a leader, and he had failed—or so he believed. Perhaps he had been half-hearted in his determination. No man looks forward to being deposed by his son, no matter how deep his faith in the way the world works, and in the ultimate inevitability and lightness of that way.

  “I ought to kill her myself,” muttered Sada.

  Yami laughed at her derisively. He did not bother to turn and face her.

  “Well?” said Sada. “What has he brought her here for?”

  “To be a wife instead of you,” said Yami coldly. The suggestion was mildly obscene.

  “He’s mad enough,” she mumbled. “Mad enough to take a beast to his bed.”

  “Shut up,” said the Old Man.

  “I’ll see her dead,” Sada promised herself, audibly. “I’ll see her dead.”

  Yami turned to spit at her. “You only kill babies,” he said. “You see them all dead.”

  Then he turned on his heel and went to the long house. Sada watched him go, with a savage glare in her eyes. She had borne her children, but they were all dead. Only one of Camlak’s children lived, and that was his by another woman. She had killed no child—to think of such a thing was impossible. It was the deadliest insult Yami could throw. Yami blamed it all on her. She blamed Camlak. A man should have more than one child, and no woman should die childless.

  Sada grabbed Nita by the scruff of the neck and shoved her out of the house, telling her to go to work. She might have attacked Huldi then, or even fulfilled her threat of murder while fury blinded her to the consequences. But she was distracted by something which was happening outside. There was a commotion which grew quickly. Porcel and the others were coming back. At the thought that they might have Ermold’s head Sada rushed out to join the crowd.

  Chapter 29

  “Is it true,” Nita asked Huldi, “that you have no Soul?”

  Huldi was busy making a meal of the scraps which had been left after Camlak had gone back to the long house. She had been given a share in the meal but she thought it wise to guard against the future. She looked up at the shadowed form of the girl-child, not sure that she should answer, or even that she could answer.

  “Is it true?” persisted Nita.

  “No,” said Huldi, not knowing whether it was truth or lie, and not caring greatly.

  “Why do we call you Men Without Souls?” asked Nita.

  “We don’t,” countered Huldi.

  “Everyone else does,” claimed the child.

  “They don’t,” Huldi contradicted her flatly.

  Nita thought that there was no point in quoting instances. She was obviously not on the right track. “What do you call yourselves?” she asked, instead.

  “Men,” said Huldi, shortly.

  Nita pondered this revelation for a few moments. “What do you call us?” she asked. “We’re men, but we call ourselves Children of the Voice.”

  “You’re Rats,” said Huldi.
r />   “Why?” asked Nita.

  It was an unanswerable question, and it threw Huldi out of her stride for a moment while she tried to examine the possibility of finding an answer. She was tempted to say: It’s what you are, but that didn’t seem to advance the argument at all. In addition, to call someone a Rat was the ultimate insuit in Walgo. Perhaps she should be more careful and less honest.

  “I don’t know,” she said, finally.

  “What’s your name?” inquired Nita.

  “Huldi.”

  “Why did you come here?”

  “There was nowhere else to go.”

  “Are you going to stay?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Nita considered this series of answers with all due seriousness, and decided that they were not really adequate. She tried to figure out a way of demanding a better answer, but couldn’t find one. Then Huldi went on.

  “I wanted to get away,” she said. “They would have killed me. I tried to kill Ermold. I would have killed him, if I could. I wanted to get away from him. I don’t know what I can do now. I can’t live on my own.”

  “You could,” said Nita.

  “No.” Huldi shook her head.

  Nita considered further, and decided that she had had enough of questions and answers.

  “I’m going out,” she said. “I want to know what’s happening in the long house. They have a man with no face, and they don’t know what to do. Yami will kill him, but I don’t know how.”

  Huldi simply did not know how to react to this information, so she did not. She simply watched Nita go out of the house. Then she moved back into her corner, wondering what to do—and what alternatives might be before her.

  Chapter 30

  Abram Ravelvent came to a decision.

  Carl Magner was important. Carl Magner was not so ridiculous as had been supposed.

  Ravelvent found a certain amount of sense in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. He still did not believe in it, but he discovered a certain attractiveness in its ideas. On top of that, it was obvious that something was brewing. He had been asked for advice by members of the Hegemony and by Alwyn Ballow. People were taking sides in the Magner affair.

  Ravelvent decided that he was on Magner’s side if he was on anybody’s. As a man of science—a man without prejudice—he felt no disposition to take the side of Heaven rather than that of Hell. Quite the reverse, in fact. To take the bad end of the case looked more objective. It was definitely more promising, from the point of view of wringing out some good argument.

  The criteria by which Ravelvent selected his stand may sound somewhat vague—that is because they were somewhat vague in his own mind—but they were sufficient to commit him. He looked upon the whole affair as an academic exercise. Having made up his mind what he was going to prove he set about gathering evidence in a thoroughly scientific manner, by painstaking research. He had no intention whatsoever of going down into the Underworld himself but he offered to lend his advice and his moral support to the expedition which was being mounted.

  Ravelvent borrowed Magner’s arguments and embroidered them. He disentangled them and reset them into a pattern which was largely his own. He shored up a few of the weak spots with speculative logic and added a few details to help round out the picture. Then he threw his weight into the gathering controversy. It was not too difficult for a man of his argumentative caliber to convince others that there might be something in Magner’s book.

  There were half a dozen more like Ravelvent. Together, they managed to form a rallying point for all those who had some kind of sympathy for Magner. The Eupsychians flocked to the banner in droves, eager to recruit any idea which might be magnified into a thorn to prick the Movement. There was hardly one of the principal supporters of Magner’s cause who lent any real credence to his allegations, let alone any real conviction to his conclusions, but the cause grew anyway. Magner was uplifted—and exposed.

  The world, at this stage, was only playing a game. But it meant a lot more than that to Magner. Magner stood to suffer from the way the game went. He had already suffered a great deal. The pressure on him was on a totally different order to anything else in the game. For him, as for his faceless son, it was a game of life and death.

  Chapter 31

  Randal Harkanter was the man who was asked to lead the descent into the Underworld. He was by no means Heres’ number-one choice—in fact, his selection represented a certain desperation in the whole matter of selection. Everybody was suddenly interested in the Underworld, but nobody wanted to go. Who could blame them?

  Luel Dascon, the Hegemon’s right-hand man, finally decided that Harkanter was the only reasonable prospect, and approached him.

  Harkanter was a big man, over six feet tall, with a strong liking for games of a rather more primitive kind than were popular in the society of Euchronia’s Millennium. Harkanter was a fierce competitor, with the attitude of a hunter. At fifty years of age he was starting what could well be a very long prime of life.

  He was implicitly Eupsychian in his approach to life, but he was in no way politically inclined. Insofar as the Eupsychians were organized into a form of political opposition he despised them utterly. He was a strong-minded man who believed that he could get what he wanted, and who believed that anyone who couldn’t get what they wanted was unworthy of his attention. He had no time for philosophical arguments about the form of society. His ideas and needs were far more basic.

  He was a complete misfit.

  “A situation has arisen,” Dascon told him, “which opens up some rather interesting possibilities. Interesting to us, and to you, in rather...er...different ways. The question concerns the Underworld.”

  Harkanter was surprised. Dascon was not surprised by Harkanter’s surprise. Harkanter was not the sort of man to pay any attention to matters like the Magner affair. Harkanter had probably never heard of Carl Magner, or The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Or William Blake, for that matter.

  “So?” said Harkanter.

  “It has been claimed that there are human beings still living on the old surface,” said Dascon.

  “Rubbish,” said Harkanter, positively.

  “That is what needs to be ascertained. The question has been raised, and no matter how ludicrous it may seem, we need direct evidence to answer it. It has been suggested that the Overworld be opened to allow some kind of commerce between the platform and the surface. The idea is causing speculation. We need facts to counter that speculation.”

  “What’s it to me?” Harkanter wanted to know.

  “We need a man to lead an exploratory party into the Underworld. It’s a job for which few enough men have the qualifications. Everyone’s interested, but nobody wants to take the trouble to find out.”

  “Send a contingent of police,” said Harkanter.

  “It’s not a police job. The police are no more qualified than anyone else. We have half a dozen scientists whose appetite for facts is strong enough to reconcile them to the idea of taking a look down there, but they’ll need someone to look after them—someone they can trust to make sure they come to no harm. You qualify. I think you’ll find the experience stimulating.”

  “Why don’t you just stamp on the whole argument?” asked Harkanter. “Issue a flat statement that no life exists down there.”

  “We can’t,” said Dascon.

  “Too many people want to argue. The Eupsychians?”

  “Partly. But we do want to know the truth ourselves. It might be important.”

  Harkanter laughed. “You want me to help you squash some Eupsychian propaganda.”

  “Why not?”

  The big man shrugged.

  “You are interested?” said Dascon tentatively.

  “So are you,” retorted Harkanter, “but there’s nobody in the Hegemony going to spend a fortnight sightseeing in the sewers. Why should I?”

  Dascon smiled politely. “It’s your kind of challenge, Randal. Isn’t it? Wouldn’t you envy anyon
e else who got this particular patch of limelight? The first expedition into the nether world for...what?...five thousand years? Perhaps more. Certainly, it will involve contact with a certain amount of dirt—but you’ve always despised people who won’t dirty their hands. It may involve a certain amount of danger—but you can handle yourself and you’re proud of the fact. There isn’t that much opportunity for this kind of excitement nowadays....” Dascon allowed the sentence to fade out gracefully, prompting Harkanter’s imagination to take up the thread of the argument.

  It already had.

  “There’s not a lot of excitement to be found grubbing around in the sewers,” said Harkanter. “I don’t go out to find excitement: I go out to make it”

  “Will you do it?” asked Dascon, easily, confident that Harkanter was well and truly hooked by now.

  “I’ll do it,” said the big man. “I’ll get some stuff together and provide a couple of extra hands to help keep your tame scientists safe from the crocodiles, or whatever. I guess I’m a fool but if it’s going to be done it might as well be me. It’ll be dark down there, I suppose?”

  Dascon shrugged elegantly. “I would imagine so,” he said. His voice sounded suddenly distant. He had said what he had to say. After he had closed the circuit he took out a handkerchief and wiped the palms of his hands. His smile had vanished without trace.

  Chapter 32

  There was a long period of sickness and delirium. Joth lay on a bed of straw in the best room in Camlak’s house. Camlak had saved him, Camlak accepted responsibility for him. Joth did not know how close he had come to death in the long house.

  Even as it was, he was close enough to death. His mind was rarely in possession of his brain for more than a few minutes. He had fever after fever, and both Nita and Huldi spent long hours by his side trying to cool him. Sada would not help. She no longer lived in Camlak’s house.