A Glimpse of Infinity. Brian Stableford
“It’s not so simple,” said Rypeck.
“It’s simple enough,” said Joth. “It’s saving millions of people from being wiped out because Heres and the Euchronians are scared. If they had been reasonable in the first place—if they’d only been prepared to recognize the fact that there are people in the Underworld who should be dealt with as people—then this whole thing wouldn’t have happened.”
“We cannot simply wait,” said Rypeck. “As Heres and millions of others see it—as Enzo and I see it, even—our minds and our identities are threatened with destruction. We know that it could be done. We want to see that it isn’t. If the threat is not to be faced in Heres’ way—a way which we and others consider to be extremely dangerous—then we must find another way to face it. If we are not to attack the threat at its source, then we must find a defense. That logic may be hard, but it is more appropriate than the ethical logic which you are trying to apply. If Enzo and myself are prepared to hear your case and support you, it is because we are afraid that Heres’ plan may precipitate the destruction it attempts to forestall, not because we want to save the Children of the Voice.”
Joth felt stricken. “When I was injured,” he said, in a very low voice, “my father fought for my life. He defended me against a medical committee which wanted to put me out of my supposed misery. My father won, and I have a face of steel and plastic. I was allowed to live. Sometimes, it has occurred to me to doubt whether or not my father did the right thing. I believed that the whole argument was one of ethics. After all, this is the Euchronian Millennium—the end-point of human ambition. And when my father wrote his book—I thought the argument then was a matter of ethics.
It occurs to me to wonder now—who did shoot my father? Who ordered it done?”
“Your father was killed by a man named Simkin Cinner,” said Ulicon, gently. “No one ordered it done. And you must see that whether you approve of our motives or not, the only way of getting what you want is our way. The only way that the people of the Underworld will be allowed to live is by our proving that the Overworld has nothing to fear from them.”
Joth looked him in the face, deliberately staring with his cold, metallic eyes. Ulicon could not meet the stare. No one could.
“I don’t think you can prove that,” said Joth. “Because you’ll always be afraid. The Euchronians have always thought that the world was theirs, because of the platform and the Plan. But now we know that it’s not true. The world belongs to the people of the Underworld. The Underworld is the world. Euchronia is a gigantic castle in the air. A dream. I think that if the Movement tries to destroy the Underworld, the Underworld will destroy the Movement, and the Overworld with it.”
“That,” said Rypeck, “is exactly what we fear.”
7.
The driver screamed, and the armored truck swerved to the left. There was a soft sound as the nearside wing sheared fungus, and then a harsher grating noise as the metal met something more solid. The vehicle came back off the wall into the road, its nose swinging as the driver jerked the wheel.
Germont was into the cockpit in a matter of seconds. By the glare of the headlights he could see something—someone—trying desperately to get out of the path of the vehicle. The driver had not hit the brakes.
It was too late. The truck hit the running figure and ran over the crushed body. Germont grabbed the wheel and held it steady, holding the vehicle on course. Finally, belatedly, the driver found the brake pedal with his foot, and the truck slowed to a halt.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” demanded Germont.
“He threw something!” gasped the driver, who was shaking like a leaf. “The lights just picked him up, and he threw a rock. It hit the canopy just in front of me—I thought it was coming through. I couldn’t help it.”
The transparent plastic had taken the blow comfortably—there was no mark. The driver had been startled rather than scared. But the shock had been considerable.
“Cut the engine,” said Germont curtly, and then turned to call to the men in the back: “Get on that searchlight! And the gun.”
He dropped back to snatch up the microphone by which he could broadcast to the convoy.
“Hold your positions,” he said. “Alpha-two, do you see what we ran over?”
“I see it,” came the reply. “I can’t make it out. Could be human. Do you want me to send someone out for a closer look?”
“No! No one gets out. Can you maneuver to get the body into the light from your headlights? I want all searchlights on. Scan the forest.”
“Jacob,” said the driver, speaking with unnatural quietness now that he was past the shock. “The road ahead. There used to be a cutting. The land’s slipped. It’s blocked. We’ll have to go back and around.”
Germont, with the microphone still in his hand, climbed up to a position from which he could look out of the cockpit. The light of the many searchlights showed that the forest was banked unnaturally high on either side of them. The road ran through a long, shallow canyon. The obstruction in front was steep, but it did not seem impassable.
“We can climb that,” said Germont. “We don’t need a road. This thing is built to hold a slope.”
Somewhere back along the line, a machine gun came to life. Almost immediately, searchlight beams converged, and Germont looked back to where tiny white figures were moving on the ridge, while the bullets tore fungal tissue to pieces all around them. The soft, pulpy flesh splashed as the bullets hit, and sections of leathery algal frondescence fluttered in the air and writhed as they slid down the slope, robbed of their support. One of the figures was hurled back, and another. Dead and alive alike, they disappeared as great clouds of spore dust poured from the afflicted area.
There was a series of dull thuds as rocks hit the plating of Germont’s vehicle. He looked up, trying to locate the throwers, while the searchlight veered back and forth.
“Stop firing!” he commanded. “They can’t hurt us!”
Then the land somewhere in the rear began to slide. It was the spot where the firing had been concentrated—the bullets had weakened the ancient structure which supported the forest, and it was tumbling, sliding down into the road.
Realizing the danger, the trucks which were in the path of the slide came forward in a hurry. The first two or three managed to get far enough. One or two didn’t, and the loose rock, moving with fluid smoothness, washed into them, turned them, shoved them and began to bury them. One was turned over on its side.
When the slide was over, six vehicles were trapped. Two were breached, and all had some degree of internal damage.
Angrily, Germont ordered men out of the other trucks to begin digging out the trapped men and freeing the vehicles. They came out in closed-environment suits, and for every two or three men to dig, there had to be one with a rifle. The searchlights continued to scan the slopes for signs of the attackers.
Germont went out himself, to look at the corpse which lay in the roadway between his vehicle and the second in line. He waited while one of the doctors inspected the body.
“Is it human?” he asked, when the examination was over.
“Near enough,” said the doctor.
“He must have been crazy,” said Germont. “Coming at the truck like that.”
“It’s not a he,” said the doctor. “It’s a she.” Then the arrow hit him. It went through the plastic suit like paper, between his ribs and deep into his chest. He died instantly.
8.
Elsewhere in the Underworld, the men from Euchronia were building a city: a city of hemispherical domes and cylindrical tunnels. The encampment beneath the plexus which had been established by Randal Harkanter and the party which he had led into the Underworld