The Face of Heaven. Brian Stableford

the holovisual network. He took it to Yvon Emerich, who was the major influence in the live media.

      Emerich was a busy man. He was a man with a burning need to keep himself busy, to burn himself out. He had a great deal of energy to expend and he expended it all outwards, sending it worldwide throughout the network, throwing his sound and fury into every household which cared to switch him on. The sheer power of his extrovert determination was enough to command him a vast audience. He had innumerably more enemies than friends, but his enemies loved him more than his closest allies. He had nothing to offer friends but everything to offer enemies—people luxuriated in the charisma of his attacks, and he attacked everybody, tearing down all points of view with equal verve. No one really suffered from an attack by Emerich simply because in the laissez-faire world of the Millennium no one had the level of commitment necessary to suffer destruction at his hands. Argument was a gladitorial game, in which the loser changed his ground and everybody enjoyed the show.

      Ballow was scared stiff of Emerich, but he was willing enough to absorb his fear if he could start something in motion. He confronted Emerich and came straight to the point.

      “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,” he said.

      “What about it?” demanded Emerich.

      “Have you read it?”

      “You know damn well I never read anything. I know what it’s about. What the hell would I want with it?”

      “It’s good.”

      “Call Sauldron. He’s an arts man.”

      “Not that sort of good,” Ballow persisted. “Good for a run. It’s got one hell of a bite—the first real bite we’ve seen for a long time. Could be the biggest ever.”

      “The man’s a lunatic,” said Emerich shortly—though the fact that he was prepared to argue meant that he was prepared to listen and take note—”and you can’t make a big thing out of a lunatic. In the end, a lunatic will make you look a fool. Every time. No percentage.”

      “No,” said Ballow. “This proposal might be insane but it has mileage. It’s going to attract some pretty hot discussion at all levels. If we can get in now we can carve up that discussion and feed it. It’ll go right to the top, and I mean the top. The Eupsychians will take it up purely as agitation, but it’s not really a Eupsychian thing. It goes deeper. When this gets to the Hegemony they’re going to find that it’s hot. It can’t be ignored and it can’t be laughed off. Heres and his cohort have been retreating toward the wall for forty years or more now and it won’t take much more to break their back. This could be it, if it’s blown up enough. Somebody somewhere is going to try, and try hard. And we ought to be in there to feed on it. This is our meat, Yvon, provided it’s handled right.”

      Emerich stared at the other man for a few seconds, and then made up his mind. “Okay,” he said, and cut the image. The voiceprinter screen faded to dull gray. Emerich remained staring at it for a few seconds more. He was hooked. He would have to chase it if only to find out what the hell Ballow was talking about.

      He requisitioned a couple of copies from his desk unit, and scanned the first few pages as they fluttered out of the lineprinter. He grimaced dramatically, and dropped the printout with distaste. He reached for the voiceprinter again. He would have to find someone to read it for him.

      Chapter 13

      Having predicted that something was going to start as a result of Magner’s book, Ballow was fully committed to doing everything in his power to start it, and thus justify his prediction. He began calling his valued acquaintances in all fields of work as soon as Emerich cut him off. Nobody he called had read the book, and few of them would bother to catch up on it as a result of his recommendation. But most of them would be prepared to talk about it if it was going to become a big talking point.

      Within a matter of hours Ballow had precipitated something of a rush on The Marriage. Lineprinters in the most unlikely corners of the world were busy clicking out copies at a furious pace. Not many of the copies would be read from beginning to end, but everybody who intended to involve themselves in the debate wanted to have some familiarity with the shape of the work and the style of presentation.

      There was something of a snowball effect when the cybernet made it known that there was expanding interest in the book. The controversy grew by leaps and bounds as individuals selected standpoints and prepared for argument. The promotion of the book to a position of some importance was almost entirely a matter of fashion. It was all something of a game. In the wake of the Euchronian Plan there was not much else it could be. Everything was a game, now the Plan was done with. When a single-minded people lose the objective of eleven thousand years of completely focused purpose, it takes time to rediscover anything like a range of purpose and endeavor. The whole of life and action is reduced to triviality, and the whole structure of social action has to be rebuilt from the ground up.

      The citizens of Euchronia’s Millennium had to evolve into their new circumstances, and in the strategic absence of virtually all basic social pressures, that evolution was not something which could take place overnight. There had to be some form of struggle to find new things to need—not simply to want—and the context of that struggle made it a very difficult one. Euchronia became a world of children and eccentrics the moment the Plan was laid to rest. The Hegemony of the Movement were not surprised—they accepted that a long period of adjustment would be necessary. Indeed, they welcomed the fact, because it gave them a chance to plan the kind of adjustment which would evolve, and it gave them time to fulfill their aim of shaping a stable society. Their work on the physical environment was over, but their work on the human factor was only just begun. By the time that Magner’s book was published they had made very little progress indeed (some would have argued that they made none, or less than none) but they were prepared to be generous with time. They still had faith—perfect faith. Again, that was the legacy of eleven thousand years’ commitment.

      Thus, though Ballow was not an important man, he found it fairly easy to make an issue out of Magner’s ideas. If he had not, someone else would have. They were, when all was said and done, rather revolutionary ideas. The fact that virtually no one took Magner seriously in the beginning did not handicap the progress of his work towards popularity (notoriety, at least). And it was inevitable in a world which so desperately needed some kind of ideological commitment that he should gradually begin to win supporters.

      The snowball grew, and Magner moved ponderously into the political arena.

      Chapter 14

      Rafael Heres was by no means pleased when Enzo Ulicon took it into his head to demand an instant discussion of Carl Magner’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

      “I’m in the middle of a game of Hoh,” he said, his tone making it quite clear that he resented the interruption.

      “Postpone it,” said Ulicon.

      “I’ll lose all semblance of control over the situation,” said Heres. “What about the others? They aren’t going to take kindly to the interruption.”

      “Rafael,” said Ulicon, “you’re the Hegemon. You can’t fit the running of the world into the interstices of your social life. There’s a storm brewing.”

      “Don’t be ridiculous,” said Heres. “This business of opening the Underworld is a farce. It’s all under control. It’s just a nonsensical argument thrown up to confuse the real problems we have to face.”

      “You aren’t going to solve any problems playing Hoh,” Ulicon pointed out. “I have to talk to you. This is urgent. It’s not just talk any more. This thing is touching one of the most fundamental of our problems. The most fundamental.”

      “What do you mean?”

      “Interrupt your game and I’ll tell you.”

      Heres, reluctantly, phased himself out of the game, leaving the other players to carry on without him or to let the game go cold while they awaited his return, as they pleased. When he was alone—switched out of the other call circuits, that is—he gave his full