Читать книгу The Face of Heaven - Brian Stableford - Страница 18

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 attention to Ulicon. He was still wearing his displeasure prominently.

“What is it?” he snapped.

“I’ve been trying to find out where Magner gets his information,” said Ulicon. “He’s pretty close-mouthed about it. There are no sources offered in the book or in any of the associated material.”

“Magner’s son 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.