The Face of Heaven: The Realms of Tartarus, Book One

by Brian Stableford

  The Ahrima fought without armor, unless one counts the masks which they wore. No doubt these masks did help to protect the head from injury, but their primary purpose was identification. The mask was the symbol of the Ahriman way of life, and no Ahriman would count a masked man his enemy, or a man without a mask as friend. The adoption of such an obvious and all-powerful symbol as the primary focus for social indoctrination led, eventually, to a strange form of pseudo-mimicry practiced by certain of the True Men. Occasionally, when a town of True Men was threatened by Ahrima they would put on masks of their own and join the marauders. In such an instance the Ahriman tribe would behave exactly as they would towards a second group of Ahrima which they encountered: the groups would move on together, and ultimately would fuse into one. Ultimately, however, could be quite a long time, and the simple fact is that the True Men were not equipped to cope with the Ahriman way of life. A whole town of True Men might join a band of Ahrima, and not one would survive the initial period of limited association. Undoubtedly, there was some introgression of genes from the True Men into the Ahriman species, but the process of selection involved in recruitment was such that the introgression was far from random. When a True Man donned the mask in order to save himself from death at the hands of the Ahrima he bought a stay of execution which would be served under difficult circumstances. His chance of getting away from the Ahrima at a later date was virtually nil. The Ahrima had a paramilitary organization and deserters were invariably killed.

  The third species whose ancestors were prehistoric men were the Cuchumanates, whose divergence from the direct line was far more remarkable than that of the Ahrima. The Cuchumanates were almost certainly the product of genetic engineering, presumably deliberate and intraspecific. The Cuchumanates were parthenogenetic females, almost totally savage in their way of life, making no use of tools or artificial shelters. They moved in small groups or “families” (children were reared collectively) and were constantly migrating along established routes in order that their food supply should be allowed to regenerate constantly and maintain itself.

  The Cuchumanates were not a warlike race, but would fight with great determination and courage if anyone attempted to displace them from their feeding grounds. As a species, they were in decline, but it seemed likely that they would survive for a long time as a rare and fugitive race. As conditions were perpetually changing it was not impossible that their ultimate fate might become more promising, but at the best their long-term chances of survival depended on factors outside their control.

  The dominant species in the Underworld at the time the Euchronian Millennium was declared was the race which called itself “the Children of the Voice.” Descended from prehistoric rats, the species may have been “aided” at some point in history by genetic engineering. In view of the fact that the species from which they evolved was the most highly developed semisentient of the old world, however, this conclusion must remain doubtful.

  The Children of the Voice lived in walled villages rather similar to those of the True Men (probably imitative). However, while the village culture of the True Men appeared to be breaking up, that of the Children of the Voice was progressive and cohesive. Far more contact existed between villages, except when they were very isolated, and some semblance of national organization was in its infancy. The Children of the Voice were a quarrelsome race, but would work together consistently, if imperfectly. Their social organization was probably allowed to develop so quickly in spite of natural handicaps by virtue of the fact that their minds tended to dwell only briefly on emotional matters. Individual loves and hates were quickly forgotten, and behind those individual emotional reactions a more ordered conception of the world and its workings was allowed to develop. This manner of mental organization may have been correlated with the short generation time of the Children of the Voice, but undoubtedly their most important single difference from all other Earthly species was the symbiotic relationship which each individual had with a being he called his “Gray Soul.”

  The Children of the Voice regularly underwent certain forms of transcendental experience (drug-assisted, by sheer power of mind, or by pressure of extreme circumstance) which placed them in communication with these beings. Whether the Gray Souls existed in “another space” which merely came into contact with theirs, or whether the symbiotes were located wholly in the minds of the Children of the Voice themselves (but as totally independent entities) is not known.

  The Children of the Voice were well able to sustain the load placed upon them by their environment, but perhaps less adapted to cope with the extraordinary pressures resulting from contact with other species. The fact that their culture evolved largely through “cultural contamination”—the imitation of the True Men and the inheritance of literacy and tool-using methods from the human-descended species in general—undoubtedly slowed their development as a unique species fulfilling its own needs and potentials.

  Time, however, was on their side.

  The so-called Hellkin were descended from prehistoric cats. They were a nomadic species with a high degree of sentience but rather limited intelligence. They lived in small groups and followed a nomadic way of life not too dissimilar to the Cuchumanates, except that they tended to be far more sociable. The Hellkin were essentially peaceful, and maintained friendly relations with all species, except the Ahrima. The Hellkin were articulate, but had no real racial identity of their own, all their pretentions to culture having been derived by imitation of other species.

  Their long-term future as a species was indeterminate. To a large extent they were culturally parasitic, but their parasitism was obviously facultative. They had untapped powers of survival. If the Ahrima were to become dominant in the Underworld the Hellkin might well become extinct or regress back to semisentience, but under all other circumstances they could probably be successful, integrating themselves into any social organization or primitive civilization without necessarily being absorbed by it.

  The last of the six species which might be reckoned as intelligent at this particular time was the species descended from dogs—the harrowhounds.

  At one time the harrowhounds were a successful predatory species. Like the Hellkin they ascended from semisentience to full sentience very quickly in the decay of civilization which took place in the second dark age. However, the harrowhounds found that their principal prey—the rats—were evolving faster and more effectively than themselves. By the time the Euchronian Millennium began the harrowhounds were nearing the bottom of a long and steady decline. Harrowhounds hunting in packs still showed a high degree of organization, and communicated very effectively despite the fact that they never adopted human language. But the solitary harrowhound was becoming ever more familiar. As a sentient species, the harrowhounds had no future, but regression might well permit them to discover a new line of development as a semisentient animal species. It is not impossible that their survival might have depended on their redomestication, perhaps by the Children of the Voice.

  Chapter 58

  Afterwards, there was a noticeable relaxation. There was no real end to the stillness, because the people on the ground did not return to their houses. But there was an end to the Communion of Souls, and the people of Stalhelm passed comfortably from trance into sleep. The priests knelt, and finally lay down. The crowd sagged and collapsed into a disordered heap. It was all over.

  When the Sun withdrew from the Earth Camlak drifted into the realm of dreams. There was no real break in continuity between the vision that was real and the vision that was not, but he knew the difference, and he would know it again when he was awake.

  Up in the hills, the lookouts also knew that it was finished. They, too, relaxed. They maintained their watch, and it was now easier for them to do so.

  In Camlak’s house, Joth and Huldi knew that it was finished. They had not spoken while the ritual was in progress, because they had both felt something of what it was about. But now they felt free.

  �
��Your people,” said Joth. “Do they...?”

  “No,” she said, quickly. Almost too quickly. He was not sure that she knew what he meant.

  “Camlak killed his own father out there,” said Joth. “His father is dead.”

  “He had to,” said Huldi.

  Joth shook his head. He did understand, but it was difficult for him to accept. “It’s the way things are,” he said. “But it’s cruel. Your people—are they as cruel?”

  She considered the question. It seemed to be meaningless, but she knew that he was looking for an answer. She decided, in the end, that the answer didn’t much matter.

  “No,” she said. The trueness or falseness of the statement was irrelevant to her. She went away from the window, back into the room where she and Joth spent the greater part of their time. She had a sheet in the corner, beyond the crude bed where Joth slept.

  Joth hadn’t finished with questions and answers. He had read the symbolism of the ritual but he found it hard to believe. He could not see that it had any meaning for the people of this world. He could see no reason why the Children of the Voice acted out something which happened in another world—something meaningless to them. He knew that primitive peoples in distant prehistory practiced rites of similar nature, but they did so as magic. They did so in order to emphasize their identity with nature. This was not the purpose of the rite he had just witnessed. The identity assumed in the play was false—it was a pretense of an affinity with a world which had little in common with that of the Shaira.

  Why? He wondered. What kind of magic was it? Was it magic at all?

  “Huldi,” he said, “what kind of gods do these people have?”

  “They have no gods,” she said.

  “They have priests. They have religion.”

  “No gods,” she said again. He knew that she would only repeat what she believed. She was incapable of discussion, of changing her mind. But did she know the truth? Could she know the truth?

  “Do your people have gods?” he asked.

  “No,” she said.

  “Do you have priests?”

  “We need no priests. We have readers.”

  Joth saw, suddenly, that it might make a kind of sense. They needed no priests, the Men Without Souls. But that was not because they had no gods. It was because they had no rituals. The Children of the Voice did have rituals, and they had priests. But did they have gods? Did they need gods, any more than the Men Without Souls? Perhaps not.

  What were gods for? he asked himself. They were the forces in action behind the visible forces of nature. They were the forces in control, the ultimate determinants of the way life should be—and had to be—lived.

  The gods were the manifestations of another world, a world of which the experienced world was only a part, a world whose laws made sense of the wayward behavior of the experienced world. The gods were the determinants of the random and the inexplicable.

  The Underworld needed no gods. The people of the Underworld did not need to imagine another world. They did not have to invent creative and determinant forces. Because there was another world. There were such forces. There was a world above them—a real, living world populated by men and not by gods. A world which, so far as the men of the Underworld were concerned, fulfilled all the functions of the supernatural world in a wholly natural fashion. The Overworld was Heaven, but it was not inhabited by gods. The peoples of the Underworld did not worship, nor did they offer sacrifices, nor did they beg for favors from chance. They had a much more stable and settled relationship with their other world than the primitives of prehistoric time.

  The Children of the Voice were religious. They were not superstitious. The ritual which Joth had just seen was designed to fulfil their own purposes. It was an execution, and a communion. The symbols it used were the symbols of the other world—the real other world—and their symbolic function was wholly religious and not magical.

  “You have no festivals,” he said to Huldi. “No ceremonies.”

  “We dance,” she said. “We like dancing.”

  “But you dance because you like it,” he said. “Not because it brings the rain, or makes for better hunting, or for better crops. You don’t dance to make you kill your enemies.”

  She didn’t answer. She had no answer to offer.

  Joth knew that the Children of the Voice did have beliefs, ideas which might be called superstitions. They did have customs which emphasized in various ways the identities of nature. Camlak had hunted the harrowhound with a spear whose head was made of the bone of a similar creature. But this was nothing more than an affinity with their world. They had no dominant, all-inclusive concept of the supernatural into which such small fragments of behavior could be collected.

  No gods. No gods at all.

  Joth realized then what the Face of Heaven really was, in the terms of the Underworld. He realized the mistake that his father had made in using the phrase in a context which made sense to him.

  He realized that his father was very wrong. Even though the images were real, even though the picture was not wholly inaccurate. Carl Magner was utterly wrong.

  Joth was still beside Huldi. He was kneeling. His brain was racing.

  Huldi, already half asleep, pulled at his sleeve. The rotted material ripped, and he looked down, confused. Neither one of them was wholly conscious of what was happening.

  Joth lay down beside the girl, and then he rolled on top of her. He felt the torrent of his thoughts begin to break up as he struggled with his clothing and reached into the folds of hers. By the time his head was clear he had no wish to recoil or reconsider.

  He hesitated. But he knew what he was doing, and he carried on.

  Chapter 59

  Chemec was running down the slopes of Clauster Ridge as fast as his crippled leg would let him run. The other lookouts whose posts commanded a view of Livider Marches were also running. Signals were passed from man to man. One paused long enough to blow a long, loud blast on the horn which he carried.

  They had been watching and waiting for the Men Without Souls.

  But it was the Ahrima who were coming.

  Chapter 60

  Huldi was fast asleep, but Joth lay awake, thinking how easy it would be to escape. There was no guard at the skull-gate. He could draw the wooden bolts by himself and be away into the night. No one would know. No one would care.

  He was indulging himself in a fantasy. He had no real plan to escape. The need which he felt to flee back to the Overworld was under control. He had faith, of a kind, that the need would be filled, in time.

  In truth, the idea of going once again into the alien wilderness of the Underworld, away from the warm walls of Camlak’s house, was a frightening one. He did not want to find himself adrift in that malicious landscape.

  The sound of the horn captured his mind, and his idle thoughts died away. He was seized by a sudden fear, because he sensed that the crisis was suddenly close at hand.

  Chapter 61

  The foremost runner arrived back at the skull-gate, seized the stick from the wall, and began to beat the drum which hung beside the gate. His breath came in great ragged gouts and his limbs burned fiercely, but he swung the stick as hard and as fast as he could.

  The village was roused within minutes. From the frozen sleep which the Communion had left in its wake sprang running men, shouting men, spreading the panic and the urgency like wildfire. Life was restored, and it found a furious tempo within seconds.

  Camlak threw off the bloodstained mask and heard the cry of “Ah...rima!” almost instantly. He was still in the gold and silver costume of the ritual when the runner was brought to him.

  “How many?” he asked, and “How soon?”

  “A horde,” said the runner, squeezing his words into the breaths that he drew. “Crossing Cudal Canal. Too many, too close.”

  “Walgo?” he asked.

  “It has not burned. Ermold must have taken the mask.”

  Camlak cursed. That wou
ld be Ermold’s way. Ermold should have been born to the mask. There was no way that Stalhelm could survive. With the fighting strength of Walgo added to the Ahriman horde, however briefly, the masked marauders would smash Stalhelm in a matter of hours. The women and the children would have to be sent to Lehr, to make the best of their way to safety while the warriors tried to hold the town. The elders, the readers, the old women...all these would have to stay too, to bear arms, if they could...to take the place of the dead as they fell from the wall.

  Death was coming. Death for all, unless Shairn could be awakened to the danger. Runners had to be sent to Lehr, to Opilion, to Digen. Perhaps the warriors would come out of the Heartland, to meet those of his people who could flee farthest. Perhaps not.

  Camlak did not need to gather and command the people. They knew what the coming of the Ahrima meant. They knew what had to be done. Camlak ran back to his house, and while he discarded the ceremonial robes for armor he talked to Joth.

  “You must go,” he said, “and go quickly. To the metal wall in the north. If there is a way home for you, you will find it there. Do not come back here. If you come back to this world at all, go west, into Shairn. Ask for me in the northern towns, or make your way south to Lehr. If you do not hear from me in Lehr you will know that I am dead. Take Nita—she knows the map that hangs in the long house and she will show you the way. Take the other too—Ermold has taken the mask and she cannot stay here. The women would kill her.”