A Vision of Hell. Brian Stableford

set in motion their own Euchronian Plan, and we can help them to make it successful. We can give them everything...except the sunlight, the Face of Heaven which Carl Magner wanted to give them. But we can supply light instead of sunlight. We can help them to find a different face for their Heaven. We owe them that. We must owe them that, at least.

      “Members of the Council, I propose that we give our attention, from this moment on, to the making of the new Euchronian Plan.”

      CHAPTER 5

      Heres believed that he had saved the world. Two worlds, in fact. That was—had to be—the perfect solution. The ideal game is the one which everybody wins. Heres, it will be remembered, was a brilliant Hoh player. The idea of a second Plan, to accomplish what even the initial Planners had assumed to be beyond their talents, was, in Heres’ eyes, the masterstroke.

      Eleven thousand years of history demanded of the people of Euchronia a commitment—a commitment that was clear, altruistic, and ambitious. The declaration of the Millennium had left not only the Movement but the entire civilization stranded on a spiritual desert island. The age of psychosis could never return, and the i-minus effect seemed to assure social adjustment, and therefore social sanity, but Euchronian culture was nevertheless dangerously full of alarm signals. Rypeck had read those signals, and Rypeck had been on the borders of fear and anxiety for years. Heres had read the signals, too, but Heres had a cool head. Heres had faith. And he had found the answer—the political and intellectual coup de grâce. Barring all accidents, not only was his political future as Hegemon secured, but also the future of the Movement and the human race.

      Barring all accidents.

      What accidents? For one thing, of course, he had jumped the gun. There was, as yet, no report from Harkanter and his party regarding conditions in the Underworld. Politically, the right moment had come before he had all the facts at his command, and thus there was a risk—of some kind. But Heres knew what Rypeck had found out about the Underworld—that it lived, that it was lighted, and that the Overworld was geared to resist the invasion of its life-forms. He also knew what Abram Ravelvent had discovered—that materials were constantly exported from the world above to the world below—materials like steel implements and books, which spoke conclusively of human life and some degree of human culture. Heres knew little enough about the Underworld, but it was enough to be sure. It mattered little how severe the conditions in the Underworld might be, or how savage the people. The magnitude of the task was, thanks to the Planners’ precedent, quite irrelevant. Heres was quite confident that any accidents of circumstance could be overcome. He still had faith in himself. Rather more than that, in fact—he had ultimate faith in the essential nature of things, in the fact that the situation (all situations) not only provided an answer by which everybody could win, but were so structured as to demand such an answer. This faith did not arise from the fact that he was a devoted Hoh player—the reverse was actually the case. That was the way Heres conceived of the universe working. It was his understanding of existence. Hoh was only a model—a simulation—of reality.

      Heres also knew that he had sidestepped the thorny questions which the Magner affair had initially asked. Those questions, framed by Enzo Ulicon, had seriously disturbed Rypeck (who was, of course, ripe for disturbance). In Heres’ scheme, there were no answers to those questions. Instead, Heres was prepared to hope that he had rendered the questions irrelevant and immaterial.

      Magner had had bad dreams. Terrible dreams. That meant that either the i-minus effect was not effective, in his case, or there was another input into his dreams—presumably telepathic. Ulicon had held the latter alternative to be the more likely. Heres had said nothing, but he had always preferred the former. He had already known—as everyone with eyes to see must have known—that the i-minus effect was not operating as per prescription in the Millennial society. No one knew how, or why, it was going wrong, but it was. Heres was inclined to attribute the deficit not to the i-minus agent but to the social psychology of the people. I-minus favored social adaptation, the establishment of social values as absolutes. If i-minus was failing, then it was for lack of social values rather than lack of adaptive capacity, so Heres thought. Given a plan—an ideal, a great social goal—then i-minus would work again. So Heres believed. He had seen Magner as the tip of an iceberg rather than a unique case of something new.

      Heres was prepared to assume that the second Euchronian Plan would solve everything. His understanding of reality encouraged him to make this assumption. He was aware, however, that it remained an assumption. He was not blind to the possibility that some unforeseen, incalculable factor might yet be thrown into the equation. He was mentally ready for such a thing to happen. It did.

      CHAPTER 6

      Jervis Burstone, whose amusement in life was to play God rather than to play Hoh, was in the Underworld, waiting. Usually, Ermold was at the rendezvous before him, unable to control his eagerness to get hold of the gifts which Burstone brought and dispensed so magnificently. (They were not quite gifts, but neither Ermold nor Burstone knew why the pretense of trading was maintained. They both believed that what Burstone took in return for his goods was worthless.)

      Burstone sighed. He knew that Ermold was not going to come. Late meant never, in the Underworld. It was a world which did not offer second chances to its people.

      Ermold had been a good contact. He had been the nastiest, most vile of all the men that Burstone had had to deal with, and by virtue of that fact he had looked to have a good many years in him. But time seemed to move so quickly here. A man might pass from maturity to senility in a matter of weeks. The people of the Underworld seemed to live their lives inside a span of time which Burstone hardly noticed in passing. Burstone could remember the contact before Ermold as if it were yesterday. And the one before that. He would remember Ermold with crystal clarity when three more contacts had all fulfilled their purpose and rotted into the stinking, polluted dust from which they came. That was the way of things.

      Burstone waited, unwillingly, glancing at his wristwatch every few moments, giving Ermold the time that was his due, but begrudging the filthy savage every second of it. Burstone did not like the stillness and the alienness and—more than anything—the cold, steady perpetual starlight. He sweated, and knew that he was slowly absorbing the stink and the foul taint of the Underworld. Once back on top he would have to slink home like a rat in the shadows, to bathe for an hour and plaster himself with the medicines which would save his skin from rotting away, and save his body from the vile diseases he inhaled with every breath. If only he could wear a mask—a proper mask rather than a wad of cotton wool and a piece of perforated plastic. But he had been warned against masks.

      He was afraid, as well.

      But the thrill of fear, and the rather less conscious thrill of pollution were almost life’s blood to him. He needed them. They gave something to him which he could not hope to find in any other way. The tainting of his body and the washing clean, the scouring of his body with the hormonal cocktail that was fear—these meant something to him. They were real to him in a way that the diversions of the Over-world were not. The ritual descent into Hell, followed by the ascent into Heaven—this was the purpose of life. It was the focal point of his existence. It was the reason that he was needed by the worlds. It was his duty, his honor, and his...joy?

      Burstone was a completely sane man. His dreams never troubled him.

      While he waited, he drifted on an ocean of feeling. An emotional castaway.

      The creatures of the underworld would not come close. The smell of him, in their senses, was just as alien to them as theirs was to him. His sharp, chemical cleanliness was an affront to them. No predator would dare to come close, and the small creatures engaged in the business of survival detoured in order to pass him by. He saw the great ghost moths fluttering between the squabs some yards away, and heard their high-pitched screaming at the very limits of his audible range, but there was not enough light for him to see anything else. He was virtually blind down here. He had a horror of darkness, too. On this, too, his soul fed.

      When the time was up, he simply picked up the suitcase and began the walk back to the cage with which he could hoist himself back to the platform. He walked with an easy, measured stride, unhurried. It took courage—genuine, completely pure courage. It took strength