The Face of Heaven. Brian Stableford

went down there.”

      “He didn’t come back, so far as I can tell. Nor did any of the others. I’ve conducted a fairly thorough search. If they were using the net they’d be easy to find, but they’re not. They could be in Sanctuary, but every source I have says that they aren’t. There are four of them—and it’s not easy for four men to stay unfound up here. Everything suggests that they went into the Underworld and are still there. In addition, Magner’s other son—the younger one—has also slipped out of sight. You may remember the fuss there was about him when he was a child. Anyhow, he’s gone too. But Magner hasn’t contacted either of them since we first mounted our watch.”

      “Are you saying that he made it all up?”

      “It’s a possibility,” said Ulicon, “but no, I’m not saying that. I heard a rumor which was much more significant, and I’ve checked with Magner’s doctor. He wouldn’t tell me anything directly, but with police help I got some records out of the net. Magner has been consulting his doctor regularly for twenty years. He complains of bad dreams. Nightmares.”

      “That’s not possible,” said Heres.

      “It’s possible, bearing in mind what Magner went through with regard to his younger son. But rumor says that Magner’s picture of the Underworld comes straight out of his dreams, and if that’s so it’s a fact we can’t ignore. It’s a fact with some rather weighty implications. We need to find out for certain, but what’s more important is to decide what we have to do if it is true.”

      “Nothing,” said Heres. “It’s absurd. It can only be a freak even if it’s true. We’re hardly likely to have an epidemic of nightmares.”

      “I’m glad you’re sure,” said Ulicon. “But it still needs checking.”

      “You want a meeting of the close council?”

      “Naturally.”

      “Couldn’t we keep it between ourselves?”

      “Rafael, it’s bad enough the close council keeping secrets from the Hegemony, without keeping secrets from one another. All right, I know this will give ammunition to Eliot, but believe me, if the implications of this are as bad as they might be, then Eliot has a strong case. We have to work this out. All of us.”

      “When?” said Heres.

      “Tomorrow. A forgathering. This can’t go through the net. We need to talk off the record. But in the meantime I’m going to do some prying and I advise you to do the same. Emerich’s on to Magner and there’s going to be a splash soon. If this business of dreams crops up and Magner isn’t the only one, then we have a very big headache indeed. You see?”

      Heres saw perfectly clearly. His mind was already working on the point. The implications of Ulicon’s argument were deadly, not only to his own personal position, but to the standpoint of the Euchronian Movement.

      Chapter 15

      The basis of Euchronianism is the philosophy that better things lie ahead. The Euchronian Movement was founded on the principle of directing change, not on a small scale, but on the largest scale possible. The Euchronian Movement preached the doctrine that to design a model society and predict that it would one day come about was simply not enough. The Movement demanded commitment—commitment to an ideal state which lay so far in the future that no man would live to see it, nor his children, nor his children’s children—only descendants so remote that they might number half the human race. The Movement demanded ultimate sacrifice in the name of a goal which could only be a racial goal.

      William Blake’s “prophetic books” offered the first Euchronian philosophy.

      Karl Marx’s social science offered the first Euchronian doctrine.

      Fundamental to Euchronianism is the intellectual transcendence of pure selfishness. Euchronianism is not necessarily religious, nor is it necessarily socialist. It is, however, necessarily altruistic.