“I’m with you,” said Ulicon.
The link was broken.
Ulicon wondered whether he had done the right thing. Maybe he was a fool to stay with Heres. Maybe Heres would steer the Movement straight into the heart of the trouble. He had been wrong once. Perhaps twice. But in this extreme situation, one had to have stability of command...someone had to hold things together...there had to be someone who could take the load of responsibility...off one’s own back.
Mechanically, Ulicon began obeying his orders.
Meanwhile, Heres was sitting alone with just one thought.
We have been invaded.
CHAPTER 47
Alwyn Ballow was at the very heart of the massive operation to find out what had happened, how, and why. He was surrounded by screens and lineprinters, keyboards and microphones. Information flowed around him in a never-ceasing stream. He was in the seat of judgment, sorting out the flow, picking from it the significant morsels, allowing the rest to disappear into mute electronic storage. He was the brain coordinating the central nervous system of the cybernet. He was God monitoring the puppet strings on which the human race was dancing. (Or, from an alternative viewpoint, he was the maggot at the very core of Euchronian’s apple.)
Yvon Emerich was at a much smaller deck, behind Ballow. He too was the brain, or God (or the maggot). That which Ballow sorted out was fed through to Emerich. Emerich collated it, reorganized it, shaped it for release. Ballow judged, Emerich commanded. Between them, they controlled Euchronia’s knowledge and—far more important—Euchronia’s belief. While Heres was forming the broadcast of Camlak’s scream into an invasion, Emerich and Ballow were making it into a spectacle.
“Crash on seven,” Ballow recited. “Car spun off highway. No injuries.”
Screen seven continued to testify with regard to the accident, but neither Ballow nor Emerich gave it any further attention.
“On nine,” chanted Ballow. “Car ran on uncontrolled...police...here’s something...! En route for Harkanter’s address...get this! Harkanter’s house is in the middle of the black area...whatever happened is inside there. Find out who made that call! Call Harkanter! Get an eye over Harkanter’s place immediately...track any vehicles, including that police car....”
“What’s that on five?” (Emerich)
“Crash...coming in now...two dead.... Makes five so far, Yvon. Safeties failed, manual interference...third time that’s happened...can’t have been a clean knockout.... Hold on for the printer...reports from fringes of the dead spot. Here’s one claims he saw a massacre...a burning town...we already have that...check against Magner’s stuff.... More people claiming they saw people in the Underworld.... Reports of recurrence by the score...medical still blank....”
“Forget all the what-I-saw business. It’s getting us nowhere. Those medic teams must be in the no-answer area by now.”
“One of the car crashes caused a minor blackout...some faculties out of op...fail-safes in, no communication...east side of black area. Other homes should be unaffected.... Police have reached Harkanter’s place...report says call made by Vicente Soron—illicit invasion of privacy—no details...says Soron was in a flat panic...hey!...eye nine has something. Check nine. Close up...give us more detail nine....”
“Hell, it’s only a car!”
“It’s going the wrong way. It’s come out of the dead area...sure it’s had time to cross it...plenty of time...but we didn’t spot it going in...get closer...no, I know you can’t show me who’s driving...find out who owns...oh, it’s public...okay, keep on it.... Keep calling Harkanter...the police are there now...they’ll answer as soon as it suits them...just keep running the bell....
“...Yvon, there’s a suicide here...ties in. They have a note but they say it makes no sense...put it on the screen...makes no sense to me.... I can’t quite make out the writing...man’s name Simkin Cinner...something about ghosts and revenge...must have taken the visions pretty hard....
“...we have a trace of the log of that car coming out of the dead area...it’s public, its journey was tracked automatically...it was driven out earlier...is that Harkanter’s house? Check with the map.... Yvon, that car is coming from Harkanter’s house...must be connected with the i.o.p. call....”
“Stop the car!”
“Can’t...don’t have authority to override....”
“Get it.”
“We’re trying...take time, though....”
“Hell, it’ll take an age to work through the police hierarchy...they’ll get to where they’re going long before. Keep that eye in close. Any chance of getting a vehicle to intercept?”
“The police have what we have, Yvon...if they won’t override they won’t intercept...they have their own chain of command tangled...something’s wrong here, Yvon. They shouldn’t be fouled up this way.”
“Policemen have brains too,” Emerich pointed out. “They got this thing between the eyes just the same as we did. Maybe worse. We got off light, to judge by some of these scare stories.”
“...they’ve completed the scan of the area...no further crashes. Death toll stands at five, probably five only...six including the suicide...maybe more inside the houses...accidents, maybe shock...call to Harkanter’s place is through....”
“I’ll take it,” snapped Emerich, and moved forward to the switches on his own phone. Ballow’s attention was momentarily diverted to the printout, and when he turned again to Emerich the news had already broken.
“Alwyn! Get Soron. In here. I don’t care how, but move Heaven and Earth if you have to. Get Soron here.”
“What happened?”
“Harkanter’s been killed. Soron saw the whole thing. If the police want to keep him get someone in with him. Get a link of some kind—I want to talk to him as soon as humanly possible....”
Emerich’s attention returned to the screen. Someone was still trying to tell him something.
“Gone?” he said. “Gone where?”
Ballow sent a quick stream of instructions into one of the microphones.allow sent a quick stream of instructions into one of the microphones.
“Get a scan from one of the eyes,” said Emerich. “Low down, round Harkanter’s house. High resolution. The rat’s loose. You probably won’t pick it up, but try.”
“...Heres continues unavailable,” reported Ballow. “Who else can we try? They don’t think Heres will say anything at all. Not tonight....”
“Get that woman,” said Emerich. “The one they put on in the Magner debate. Her thoughts ought to be worth a penny or two right now. Clea Aron...get her. And get that friend of Magner’s...the one who was with him when he was shot. Abram Ravelvent. I was talking to him on screen last night—it was his recording that we had to chop. He’s full of ideas about the Underworld—find out what he has to say about this....”
“...More in on Harkanter,” said Ballow. “He was shot dead. Nothing more. They won’t let us near Soron...not the police—the Movement...they’ve claimed him...Yvon! They’re trying to close us down!”
“Have you got Aron?”
“She’s not available.”
“Ravelvent?”
“Just left home.... That car! It’s stopped...get that eye in closer...that building is the plexus where Harkanter’s expedition went down to the Underworld. It’s where the door is.... I can’t see them clearly in this light. Two, maybe three...they must be going down...you think the rat might be with them?”
Emerich was staring at his screen again.
“You can’t close down,” he was saying. “You can’t just black out the holovisuals all over the world.”
Ballow switched into the call. The man at the other end was Luel Dascon—Rafael Heres’ chief satellite.
“We have the authority,” said Dascon. “A state of emergency was declared a few moments ago. We are taking over all media. We will continue to broadcast, but your people may not interfere in any way whatsoever.”
“You can’t do that!” said Emerich,
loudly.
“Please hand over all facilities to the authorized representatives of the Council,” said Dascon smoothly. “They should be with you now.”
“They are,” put in Ballow.
“I’m telling you,” said Emerich, his face white with anger, “that if Heres has any ideas of winning the petitioned election he can forget them! I’ll kill his chances stone dead for this.”
“There isn’t going to be an election,” said Dascon. “The state of emergency overrules the petition. We’re all in this together, Yvon. All the quarreling is over. We have to unite now...against a common enemy.”
CHAPTER 48
When Ravelvent arrived at the plexus, Julea was still in the car. The camera eye was hovering in the sky, shining with the reflection of the silver dawn light, but with that exception she was alone. The car’s microphone was still in her hand. She was not crying, but her face was flushed and the look in her eyes suggested that she simply could not find the tears.
“What happened?” said Ravelvent.
It was the wrong question. She gave him a look that was angry, almost hateful. He led the car door open while he took her arm and guided her gently out on to the verge at the side of the road. Her eyes were drawn to the door to the mechanical nerve complex—the door which gave access to a staircase into the world below. It stood ajar. They had stood here before, the two of them, not daring to pass beyond the doorway themselves. They had waited, and nothing had happened.
“He’s not coming back,” said Ravelvent, gently. He meant her father, Carl Magner.
“He is,” she said. “He said so. He said that he would come back, but he had to go.” She was not talking about her father but about Joth.
“It’s all right now,” said Ravelvent. “It’s all over.”
“No,” she said. “It won’t ever be over. He killed him. That won’t ever end.”
Ravelvent looked around for something to put over her shoulders, because she was obviously cold. But there was nothing in either of the cars. He put his arms round her instead, and hugged her close.
“Let’s go home,” he said. “My home. Not your father’s empty house. Come home with me. It’ll be all right.”
She shook her head, and squirmed out of his grasp. He withdrew his hands and stood still, feeling rather lonely.
“Joth’s coming back,” she said. “It’s Joth who went down there. He brought me here. I couldn’t drive back. I had to call you. But we must wait. For Joth.”
Ravelvent was at a loss.
“Before you called,” he said, half turning away so that he did not seem to be talking to her at all, “the strangest thing happened. I was doing some work...some programming, for the educational facilities...I was deliberately not watching the holovision, because I knew that I was on and I didn’t want to see, when...it was like a bomb going off in my head...and now, I have the crazy feeling that I can see...visions...as your father saw them. I can see the Underworld, Julea. I know it was true. It’s not a game any more.”
“It’s not a game,” she said, soberly. “He’s dead.”
“Who?”
“Randal Harkanter.”
“Who?”
“The Underworlder shot him. It was...like a bomb going off in his head....”
“What happened?” demanded Ravelvent, for the second time. He was facing her again now, and his voice was raised.
She wouldn’t say anything. She wanted to cry but she couldn’t. He tried to take hold of her again, but she stepped backwards.
“It’s all right,” he tried to insist. “Whatever it was, it’s over now. It was only a bad dream. It’s over now. You must come home with me. It’ll be all right, there. It’s over now.”
“No,” she replied. “Not now. It won’t ever be over.”
Then she let him lead her to his car, and drive her away. The other car, which Joth had requisitioned from the omni-benevolent machine which served all life in the Overworld, remained.
Waiting.
CHAPTER 49
“Eliot,” said Heres, “I’m asking for your help. What happened yesterday and the day before simply doesn’t matter now. We wake up this morning to a new world. We have to face that. There’s no point in dragging all the old, tired arguments behind us now. Eleven thousand years of Euchronian history ended last night. This morning, the Millennium is meaningless. The argument about the relevance of the i-minus agent is shifted into an entirely new dimension. If you continue to push your petition for an election you could destroy the Movement. I’m asking you for your sake, and my sake, and for the sake of the whole world, to forget our differences and help me.”
“Do I have a choice?” said Rypeck, bitterly.
“Would I be asking you if you hadn’t?”
“The petition falls in any case. You’re the Hegemon and you’ve taken a tight hold on your Hegemony. The disaster which you may have caused with your willful blindness has come, and you’ve taken advantage of it to confirm your power. You have a frightened world, Rafael, and they turn to you because you’ve forbidden them to turn anywhere else. You’re riding high, Rafael. But where to? I’ve been trying to call you for hours and getting nothing but a blank wall. Now you call me, and you ask for my help. Why, Rafael? Are you sure, now, of everyone else? Everyone but the Eupsychians? Are you trying to close the ranks completely?”
“If that’s the way you want to put it,” said Heres, “that’s what I’m trying to do. We can’t afford to have the Council divided now. I need your loyalty and I’m asking for it. Euchronia faces danger and tragedy, and we need Euchronian unity—singleness of mind and singleness of purpose. We have been invaded, Eliot. The invasion has struck into our very minds. You were right when you said that we are ignorant. We are worse than ignorant—”we are vulnerable. We’ve all made mistakes—the whole Movement has left itself unready to cope with what struck at us last night. But now we have to cover for those mistakes. We have to unmake them. We have to deal with the threat which Euchronian society faces. If this thing gets loose, we will be destroyed. Now I ask you, Eliot, do you want to try to apportion blame—to waste your efforts in bitterness and recrimination—or do you want to help. Are you with me, or against me?”
And Rypeck realized, inevitably, that he didn’t have a choice.
“Yes, Rafe,” he said, “I’m with you. Let’s save the world. How do you propose to go about it?”
CHAPTER 50
Joth half-expected that they would be waiting at the bottom of the stairway. He was ready, if it proved necessary, to fight his way back into the Underworld. And yet he did not intend to stay. He only wanted to tell Nita what had happened—to explain why he had not returned her father to his world.
But the scientists in the camp were far too preoccupied to be guarding the door with guns. They, too, had been invaded during the night, first torn from their sleep and then kept back from it by the nightmares which threatened to engulf them whenever their eyes closed and their mind relaxed from conscious ratiocination. They had assumed, in the beginning, that the experience was theirs alone: that the Underworld had reached out to punish them for their invasion, that the dreams came because they were strangers in an alien world. They came together, to talk, because they felt the need for company, and for some collaborative exercise to occupy their thoughts and senses. They were afraid—desperately afraid.
By the time that dawn broke in the world above, and Joth and Iorga returned to the world of the fixed stars, the expeditionary force had learned that what they had experienced had also swept the upper world like a great tidal wave. It had changed the current of their argument, in frantic search of an explanation, but it had not alleviated their fear or their need to huddle together, cowering from the perpetual night. The man with the metal face and the hellkin escaped into the Swithering Waste unnoticed.
There they met Chemec, who had waited patiently for their return for many hours whose passage he had no way to measure.
He, too, had dreamed. He,
of all people, should have known what was happening, but in fact he, alone, remained completely unmoved and undisturbed by the images which had flooded his mind. He had not been aware that they came from elsewhere. The scenes that were plucked from Camlak’s ego might just as well have come from his own. He believed that he had seen only things which came from within himself, woven into the distorted, tattered cloth of a commonplace nightmare. Such things did not worry Chemec, who was used to nightmares. Had he kept closer company, within himself, of his Gray Soul, perhaps he would have known that something new and strange had happened to him, but Chemec was not a man who made much use of his Soul.
Possession of a Soul is no guarantee of understanding.
But Chemec led Joth and Iorga back to one who did know, and who was even beginning to understand. Nita, like the cripple, might have confused Camlak’s mindblast with something echoing out of the inwardness of her own being, but her mind was younger than Chemec’s, and she slept much closer to her Soul. She had heard Camlak’s scream of anguish and pain as he had torn himself free from external space, and she had sensed the ripple which had been created in the fabric of space by that tearing, and which had acted as a carrier wave for the image-charged emotion which had been generated within his mind by the scream.
She knew, therefore, some time before Joth came back, that Camlak was no longer in the Overworld—no longer in the world at all.
A Vision of Hell: The Realms of Tartarus, Book Two Page 16