kept up the sham. He would not, could not, bring himself to relinquish the pretense that had sustained him through so many years.
But the persistent answering, when he knew no answers, made him very tired indeed.
He stared at the image of Joel Dayling which hovered above his desk. Dayling looked equally tired. His expression was grim.
“It’s no longer a matter of politics.” he was saying. “I no longer have to defeat Euchronia because Euchronia is dead. It died when its basic premise was overturned. There is no stable future. There is no secure present. It’s no longer a matter of Eupsychians and Euchronians, trying to topple Heres from his pedestal. We’re all in the same boat now, and the Movement is falling apart. Everyone has a voice now, not just the Movement. I’m not interested in getting Heres out of office now—I’m interested in saving the world, if it can be saved. What I want from you is an opinion, that’s all. Not your vote or your endorsement. I just want to know—can Heres destroy the Underworld? Is it possible?”
Ravelvent didn’t know. He didn’t want to answer. But even while he hesitated and looked for an evasion, the rhetoric was trying to surface inside his skull. He fought, trying to keep perspective.
“Not the way the world thinks,” he said. “Maybe this world could be destroyed with a snap of the fingers, but not the world down there. The people are used to thinking of the Overworld as one vast unit—one great big machine-wrapped family. That’s their idea of what a world is. But the Underworld is very different. With our resources, perhaps we could destroy it—destroy all the higher life-forms, at any rate. But not in years, or decades, or perhaps centuries. They don’t have a machine-host which can just be switched off. We’ll have to go into that world and spread our poisons and our diseases mile by mile. No one in Euchronia has any idea of the true size of the world. We have instant electronic presence—we can go anywhere in the world by sitting in front of a screen and pressing a switch. You and I are thousands of miles apart, and yet we’re face-to-face. No one understands how big the Underworld is. Not even Heres. He may destroy the Underworld, but I doubt it. You just can’t conceive of the magnitude of the task that he’s set himself.”
“If what I’ve heard is true,” said Dayling, “Heres’ chief weapon—perhaps the only one that matters—is a virus. Rumor has it that this thing will lay waste the Underworld’s plant life utterly, and that it will spread like wildfire.”
“I don’t know that I can comment on that,” said Ravelvent.
“I’m not asking you to give away any secrets,” said the Eupsychian, slightly scornfully. “Even if you know any. I’m not fishing for information I can use in a whispering campaign. I want to know just what kind of a chance Heres’ present policy has of success. Treat the question hypothetically. What would be the limitations of such a virus? Can it be made, and if so, will it do what it has to?”
Ravelvent hesitated, but then carried on. He saw no point at all in concealing the truth as he saw it.
“What we know so far,” he said, “suggests that the Underworld life-system is, at primary production level, almost totally derived from fungal and algal forms native to the pre-Euchronian era. If these can be successfully attacked, the bottom is knocked out of virtually every food-chain that exists down there. If the fungoids and algoids can be destroyed, animal life will cease to be possible. What Heres’ scientists are trying to do is tailor a family of viruses to attack chemical structures unique to the kinds of cell which are found in the Underworld life-system, but not our own, which is derived from very different kinds of plant. This is not difficult. Fungi and algae survive in the Overworld as pests, and research to weed out such parasites using tailored viruses was going on as far back as the prehistoric ages. It was one of the first fields of research which the Movement reinstituted on the platform.
“The problems involved are twofold. In the first instance, we have no idea as to the possible reactivity of the Underworld’s life-system, or its capacity for self-repair. We don’t know what degree of immunity to expect, and we don’t know how quickly the organisms in the Underworld will discover immunity. There is reason to believe that the Underworld’s entire ecosystem is in the tachytelic evolutionary phase, which means that its capacity to absorb and withstand attack of this kind could be high.
“The second problem is transmission of the diseases. This will happen naturally, to some extent. In a given locale, the viruses will—as you put it—spread like wildfire. But introducing a disease into a life-system isn’t like lighting a fuse and waiting for an explosion. Tailored diseases have difficulty in spreading simply because there’s no reservoir of infection within the system as a whole. There is no such thing as an unlimited epidemic. These viruses are going to have to be assisted in their conquest by constant seeding over very wide areas. That will take a great deal of time and a tremendous level of production. A great deal of effort goes into the isolation of one gram of a crystalline virus. When we talk of destroying worlds, we talk in tons rather than grams.
“The viruses may do what Heres thinks is necessary, but it won’t be done overnight, and the amount of resistance within the life-system may be far greater than we hope. And in the meantime—while Heres’ grand plan is in progress—new factors may enter the situation. Anything might happen. Heres may have picked the simple answer, but it isn’t an easy one. There are no easy ones.”
“Thanks,” said Dayling. “That’s what we needed to know.”
“We?” queried Ravelvent.
“Don’t worry. We aren’t a revolutionary movement. Not anymore. We don’t have to be. The revolution started without us. Now, we’re the government-in-reserve. When Heres reaches the end of his rope, the Council will have to turn to someone. We intend to be the only people with ideas. If you want a job, Abram, you only have to ask.”
Ravelvent laughed shortly.
“You always wanted to be dictator,” he said, with a hint of bitterness.
“Not at all,” said Dayling. “I always wanted to be messiah.”
6.
“Did you see anything which suggested that the rats are telepathic?” demanded Rypeck.
“They’re not rats,” said Joth.
“Do they use telepathy?” persisted Rypeck.
Joth shook his head. “Camlak said nothing to suggest that they could. But afterwards...Nita knew what had happened. Maybe they have telepathy but don’t use it. I don’t know.”
“They have it,” said Ulicon, quickly. “We know that. Memory images can be transmitted and implanted. What Joth’s evidence suggests is that they can’t control it. In all probability, they’re not even aware of it. They take for granted the fact that their minds spill over from their selves, that there’s some kind of unitary organization within the species—perhaps like a hive of bees. This property of their minds is completely bound up with ritual and religion—to them, it’s natural. They personify the collective as their souls. The communion of souls is a social thing, where the whole social unit shares some experience through invoking this group identity.”
Rypeck waved a hand angrily. “It doesn’t even begin to look like an explanation,” he said. “Enzo, we must do better than this. You can’t use this garbled nonsense to explain the fact that the rat—or man, or whatever—disappeared from that cage. Where did it go? Did it dissipate itself into your hypothetical superorganism? What happened to its body? We mustn’t lose sight of the fact that we’re dealing with a physical event. The blast of energy was
