Briefing for a Descent Into Hell (16 page)

THE CONFERENCE

was convened on Venus, and had delegates from as far away as Pluto and Neptune, both of whom normally asked for transcripts to be sent. But this time, everyone in the solar system would be affected. The Sun Himself was represented. But his Presence was general and pervasive: the light glowed more strongly after a certain point in the proceedings, and a silence fell for a moment—that was all. But everyone knew how rare an event this was, and the sense of urgency deepened.

Minna Erve was in the Chair. A forceful and animated woman, with particularly arresting eyes, she was the obvious choice, because of her position as Chief Deputy’s oldest daughter.

The conference was already nearly over, with not much more than the Briefing to come. Already those who were not in on the Descent were getting up and collecting their gear.

Minna Erve was still speaking. “In short, this is the worst yet. The computers have checked and doublechecked
—and checked again. This was on advice from on High—” here the Light pulsed in acknowledgement—“but there is no doubt. The balance of planetary forces already exercises strong adverse pressures, which will reach a peak in about ten to fifteen years from now. Their years, of course. Before you leave, I’d like you to watch this second film,
Forecast (Detail).”

Delegates glanced at each other, but sat down again. Minna might be overconscientious, but it was true enough that until most of them had reached here and had been hit by the atmosphere of this particular conference, they had not really appreciated the urgency.

They had already seen the
Forecast
film, showing Earth as an item in its place in the solar system. Earth had showed it was under pressure, as it and the other planets moved into the expected positions, first of all by the increased activity of the surface. This was slight to begin with, but earthquakes, tidal waves, excessive movements of all kinds become increasingly noticeable. The weather, always inhospitable to life on that planet, became more extreme. The icecaps melted slightly, causing havoc along the seaboards. The Comet added its quota of disturbance to the already delicate-enough balances between Earth and its neighbours. The representatives of Mars and Venus had sat with particularly long faces. What happened anywhere in the System (and of course, beyond) affected everyone, but near neighbours were bound to feel it first: the last time Earth was in a crisis, both Mars and Venus had suffered, and the memory of that time was still strong. But it had not been possible for any delegates, not even those from Pluto and Neptune, to whom the
Earth’s inhabitants were alien indeed, to watch the end of the
Forecast
film without awe.

But this was
Forecast (Detail)
; Earth in closeup, by herself, and without even the Moon. The previous film, showing Earth and Moon as—as it were—an atom of the molecule, had brought home first the change in the seasons, weather, crustal activity, vegetation. This film, on a smaller and slower scale, showed the drastic increase of population as Forests and Plant Life and Animal Life diminished, and deserts spread. For as animal and bird life dwindled, human beings multiplied, to preserve the balance. Organic life, necessary in the cosmic balance, had to be maintained on Earth, and as humans killed and destroyed the organic life of which they were a part, their own increase kept the balance. But their aggressiveness and irrationality increased steadily. As usual it was a total process—one strand or factor not to be separated from another. It was not that human aggression and irresponsibility increased because of the population explosion, and that this explosion was because of the planetary movements—all these were strands in a single process.

The delegates watched with steadily deepening grimness as wars, previously kept fairly local, got worse and enlarged. Towards the end the destruction ceased to have even a pretence of consistency. Nations became allies in one decade who had been enemies the last; enemies who had been devoting every technical resource to mutual slaughter suddenly became allies. But the technical devices were out of control; the instruments of mass slaughter and destruction took over. As that planetary position was reached that was by now designated everywhere in the System as
FIRST CLASS
EMERGENCY
, the increasingly poisoned atmosphere on Earth, the emanations of mass Death and Fear, reflected back and affected—first of all, Mars and Venus; and their imbalance in its turn spread out to the other planets—and, as was signalled by the presence of the Sun Himself, to the Sun Himself.

By the time the planets had moved out of the Danger position, changes must occur in every part of the System which even now, at this moment, the computers in a million laboratories were busy forecasting.

The penultimate stage showed by
Forecast (Detail)
was more violent than the last stage. Earth rocked and hissed, and heaved, showered locally by falling rock, flame, boiling liquids, and convulsed by quakes. Men fought and struggled. There were mass movements of lower forms of animal and insect, locusts, rats, mice. There were sudden epidemics. Whole nations of people died in these epidemics, and as poisoned air and water reached their patches of the planet. So much of animal and human life died it was as if the globe quietened, stilled. An awful emptiness distinguished the final stage. It seemed as if no life remained. But even while this cauldron of poison bubbled, it was possible to see the beginnings of another pattern—some of the humans busied themselves in a different way. Even as the Earth’s convulsions began to subside, the planetary Emergency over, they were again rebuilding, re-creating—and, as was obvious from their increasingly meaningful activity, the crisis on the planet had bred a new race. It was a mutation. While not much different in appearance from the previous human, the new human being had increased powers of perception, a different mental
structure. This remnant of an old, or the beginnings of a new race, had as heritage all the accumulated experience of the human race, plus, this time, the mental equipment to use it.

Forecast (Detail)
ended, and the delegates left. When no one remained but the Descent Team and Minna Erve, the hundred or so of them waited politely for the Sun to leave, if He so wished, but the pervasive golden glow remained steady. Some thought It even brightened a little, and they took courage from this, thinking it to be a message of hope, and of belief in their powers to accomplish what they had all volunteered to do.

Now Minna Erve was joined on the platform by Merk Ury.

Minna said: “Merk will brief you. But I must remind you all that Time is running out.”

Merk said: “Thanks, Minna. I had in fact already decided to limit this to the main points, particularly of course as you have already so ably done the groundwork.

“The first point is this—and the second and the third—you should not underrate the difficulties. Every one of you in this room has of course travelled extensively inside the System—some of you perhaps outside of it—and you won’t need to be told that to hear a place described is not the same as experiencing it. Which is another reason to keep these few remarks short.

“Now, you will probably all know that at first there was a doubt whether life could exist on Earth at all, after the previous Crisis which altered the atmosphere. But Nature is infinitely resourceful, making virtues from deficiencies. We had thought that nothing could live in that tempestuous,
erupting, unstable, accident-prone planet, but in fact the life forms did adapt, but most are only able to live in certain dry areas of the Earth and where the temperature is more or less equable. Most parts of the planet are too cold, too hot, wet, frozen, mountainous or dry. But you are all familiar with the dominant creature that has evolved, its most striking physical feature being its pumping system for air and liquid. In other words, it is distinguished by the organs it has evolved for living in a particularly difficult and poisonous air. But it is as yet an inefficient adaptation and the creature’s mental processes are defective.

“Now, the Permanent Staff on Earth has always had one main task, which is to keep alive, in any way possible, the knowledge that humanity, with its fellow creatures, the animals and plants, make up a whole, are a unity, have a function in the whole system as an organ or organism. Our Permanent Staff’s task is always extremely difficult, the main feature of these human beings as at present constituted being their inability to feel, or understand themselves, in any other way except through their own drives or functions. They have not yet evolved into an understanding of their individual selves as merely parts of a whole, first of all humanity, their own species, let alone achieving a conscious knowledge of humanity as part of Nature; plants, animals, birds, insects, reptiles, all these together making a small chord in the Cosmic Harmony.”

Here there was a discreet, slight, and not uniformly approving applause. For Merk had a literary turn. Merk smiled slightly on hearing it. He knew quite well that some of them there believed that as he was a technician he should
not be indulging himself with the inexact arts. It was an affectation among some of them to use jargon, despise literature and to arm themselves with a jaunty facetiousness when approaching the serious.

“Each individual of this species is locked up inside his own skull, his own personal experience—or believes that he is, and while a great part of their ethical systems, religious systems, etc., state the Unity of Life, even the most recent religion, which, being the most recent is the most powerful, called Science, has only very fitful and inadequate gleams of insight into the fact that life is One. In fact, the distinguishing feature of this new religion, and why it has proved so inadequate, is its insistence on dividing off, compartmenting, pigeon-holing, and one of the most lamentable of these symptoms is its suspicion of, and clumsiness with, words.” Here he smiled again, winningly enough. A few laughed.

“To sum up these few remarks: our task, that of the Permanent Staff, is always to inculcate and maintain a truth to which these creatures are so far able only to pay lip service, a phrase of theirs which is their way of summing up their most powerful defect, the inability to see things except as facets and one at a time. The truth is that We—speaking of course in our roles as delegates and deputies—” and here the all-pervading Light brightened for a moment, as it were in acknowledgement of their stewardship—“We can only tolerate them insofar as they obey instructions, manage their affairs, their communal life, in such a way as to adjust to the System’s needs. But they seem unable to retain this very simple truth for long, although they have been told again
and again, and this is because of another and most powerful feature of their thinking, which is that anything they are told is distorted to fit their own particular personal or group bias and then added, like another pebble to the pile of the half-truths they already cherish. So that we confidently expect—or could have expected in the past, before this present great (forgive me for another lapse into the literary) leap forward, under the influence of the Solar Wind of Change—” and here the Light brightened and, as it were, smiled—“that anything we have to say will be retained in its pure form for only a short time and by a few people, because in the nature of things, or rather, it is in
their
nature, this simple fact—human duty as part of the Harmony—will be off running like a mad dog, will be twisted out of itself, will have become the property of a hundred warring sects, each claiming that their version, which they have concocted, is correct. But that time is past, or nearly so. An ability to see things as they are, in their multifarious relations—in other words, Truth—will be part of humanity’s new, soon-to-be-developed equipment. Thanks of course, not to Us, but to …”

The Light deepened a chord, and held it. Everyone showed that he or she was conscious, with Merk Ury, that the main point, the central issue, had been reached. There was a general brightening and steadying of their individual atmospheres, forcefields or auras.

“As everyone here knows, has had drummed into him or her from the moment he or she volunteered—it is not at all a question of descending into that Poisonous Hell and remaining unaffected. Every one of us takes his life in his
hands. For these creatures are for the most part malevolent and murderous by nature, able to tolerate others only insofar they resemble themselves, capable of slaughtering each other because of a slight difference in skin colour or appearance. Also they cannot tolerate those who do not think as they do. Although they know perfectly well, theoretically, that the surface of the inhabited globe is divided into thousands of areas, each with its system of religious or scientific belief, and although they know that it is entirely by chance that any individual among them was born into this or that area, this or that area of belief, this theoretical knowledge does not prevent them from hating foreigners in their own particular small area, and if not harming them, isolating them in every way possible. This means, that unless we can perfect our own adaptation to them, they will attack us, the Team’s members. This we must expect. Further, we must expect that the colonies on Earth that are the result of previous Descents will have acquired—or many of them will—these same qualities of separativeness, and unharmony and hostility to others. Or, retaining in that poisonous brew they call air only the memory that they should
not
allow themselves to be affected, they devote all their energies to elaborate systems whose function was once to keep them sane, but which now have become their own justification.

“Now, as you know, this will not be my first Descent.”

Here, again, many glances were exchanged. This time for mutual comfort and support. For not one of those present were unaware of the dramatic histories of some of the previous Descents. Or rather of those which were documented—for most were not, since they had been designed to remain
unknown to the inhabitants of Earth. But throughout the Solar System, tales of the various Descents were told and retold—as fables, as far as most people were concerned. But to the few who knew they were literally true, they were grim enough hearing. For the first Law enjoined on them all, the children of the System, by their Father, was to love one another—that is, to respect the laws of Harmony. And yet so very close to them, their neighbour, strand of their strand, pulse of their pulse, energy of their energy, was Earth, whose inhabitants not only did not respect the Law, but who tended to persecute or kill, if they did not ignore, Those who came to remind them of it. And such a backsliding and a falling-away on the part of close neighbours tended to make them uncertain of their own continuing safety and health of mind—for after all, every one knew perfectly well that accidents could happen anywhere, that the planetary housekeeping and estate managing was, and had to be, subsidiary to a structure of Law much greater than that of the Solar System. In short—they, too, could become victims; there but for the grace of Light, went they.