The Best of Jack Vance (1976) SSC

by Jack Vance

  The slaves seized him and in spite of Thissell's desperate struggles, conveyed him out on the dock, along the float and up on the dock.

  Angmark fixed a rope around Thissell's neck. He said, "You are now Haxo Angmark, and I am Edwer Thissell.

  Welibus is dead, you shall soon be dead. I can handle your job without difficulty. I'll play musical instruments like a Night-man and sing like a crow. I'll wear the Moon Moth till it rots and then I'll get another. The report will go to Polypolis, Haxo Angmark is dead. Everything will be serene."

  Thissell barely heard. "You can't do this," he whispered. "My mask, my face ..." A large woman in a blue and pink flower mask walked down the dock. She saw Thissell and emitted a piercing shriek, flung herself prone on the dock.

  "Come along," said Angmark brightly. He tugged at the rope, and so pulled Thissell down the dock. A man in a Pirate Captain mask coming up from his houseboat stood rigid in amazement.

  Angmark played the zachinko and sang, "Behold the notorious criminal Haxo Angmark. Through all the outer-worlds his name is reviled; now he is captured and led in shame to his death. Behold Haxo Angmark!"

  They turned into the esplanade. A child screamed in fright; a man called hoarsely. Thissell stumbled; tears tumbled from his eyes; he could see only disorganized shapes and colors. Angmark's voice belled out richly:

  "Everyone behold, the criminal of the out-worlds, Haxo Angmark! Approach and observe his execution!"

  Thissell feebly cried out, "I'm not Angmark; I'm Edwer Thissell; he's Angmark." But no one listened to him; there were only cries of dismay, shock, disgust at the sight of his face. He called to Angmark, "Give me my mask, a slave-cloth. . . ."

  Angmark sang jubilantly, "In shame he lived, in maskless shame he dies."

  A Forest Goblin stood before Angmark. "Moon Moth, we meet once more."

  Angmark sang, "Stand aside, friend Goblin; I must execute this criminal. In shame he lived, in shame he dies!"

  A crowd had formed around the group; masks stared in morbid titillation at Thissell.

  The Forest Goblin jerked the rope from Angmark's hand, threw it to the ground. The crowd roared. Voices cried,

  "No duel, no duel! Execute the monster!"

  A cloth was thrown over Thissell's head. Thissell awaited the thrust of a blade. But instead his bonds were cut.

  Hastily he adjusted the cloth, hiding his face, peering between the folds.

  Four men clutched Haxo Angmark. The Forest Goblin confronted him, playing the skaranyi. "A week ago you reached to divest me of my mask; you have now achieved your perverse aim!"

  "But he is a criminal," cried Angmark. "He is notorious, infamous!"

  "What are his misdeeds?" sang the Forest Goblin.

  "He has murdered, betrayed; he has wrecked ships; he has tortured, blackmailed, robbed, sold children into slavery; he has—"

  The Forest Goblin stopped him. "Your religious differ-ences are of no importance. We can vouch however for your present crimes!"

  The hostler stepped forward. He sang fiercely, "This inso-lent Moon Moth nine days ago sought to preempt my choicest mount!"

  Another man pushed close. He wore a Universal Expert, and sang, "I am a Master Mask-maker; I recognize this Moon Moth out-worlder! Only recently he entered my shop and derided my skill. He deserves death!"

  "Death to the out-world monster!" cried the crowd. A wave of men surged forward. Steel blades rose and fell, the deed was done.

  Thissell watched, unable to move. The Forest Goblin approached, and playing the stimic sang sternly, "For you we have pity, but also contempt. A true man would never suffer such indignities!"

  Thissell took a deep breath. He reached to his belt and found his zachinko. He sang, "My friend, you malign me!

  Can you not appreciate true courage? Would you prefer to die in combat or walk maskless along the esplanade?"

  The Forest Goblin sang, "There is only one answer. First I would die in combat; I could not bear such shame."

  Thissell sang, "I had such a choice. I could fight with my hands tied, and so die—or I could suffer shame, and through this shame conquer my enemy. You admit that you lack sufficient strakh to achieve this deed. I have proved myself a hero of bravery! I ask, who here has courage to do what I have done?"

  "Courage?" demanded the Forest Goblin. "I fear nothing, up to and beyond death at the hands of the Night-men!"

  "Then answer."

  The Forest Goblin stood back. He played his double- kamanthil. "Bravery indeed, if such were your motives."

  The hostler struck a series of subdued gomapard chords and sang, "Not a man among us would dare what this maskless man has done."

  The crowd muttered approval.

  The mask-maker approached Thissell, obsequiously stroking his double-kamanthil. "Pray Lord Hero, step into my nearby shop, exchange this vile rag for a mask befitting your quality."

  Another mask-maker sang, "Before you choose, Lord Hero, examine my magnificent creations!"

  A man in a Bright Sky Bird mask approached Thissell reverently.

  "I have only just completed a sumptuous houseboat; seven-teen years of toil have gone into its fabrication.

  Grant me the good fortune of accepting and using this splendid craft; aboard waiting to serve you are alert slaves and pleasant maidens; there is ample wine in storage and soft silken carpets on the decks."

  "Thank you," said Thissell, striking the zachinko with vigor and confidence. "I accept with pleasure. But first a mask.'*

  The mask-maker struck an interrogative trill on the gomapard. "Would the Lord Hero consider a Sea Dragon Conqueror beneath his dignity?"

  "By no means," said Thissell. "I consider it suitable and satisfactory. We shall go now to examine it."

  "Rumfuddle” was originally commissioned by Robert Silverberg for a collection of three stories founded upon the same theme but produced by different writers. Opinions seem to vary as to the complete success of,such an approach. From one perspective the idea is provocative and appealing; the theme is explored in many aspects. Another viewpoint suspects that the stories tend to vitiate each other.

  What, then, is Robert Silverberg? An impractical theoretician? A dreamer in an ivory tower? To the contrary, he is a pragmatist of no iriean distinction; he has performed a deed of altruism by giving substance to an amusing caprice which otherwise might have dissolved into a few rhetorical glimmers. The writers are complacent; so far as I know, all were paid and none seem to be agonized by misgivings.

  RUMFUDDLE

  I

  From Memoirs and Reflections, by Alan Robertson: Often I hear myself declared humanity’s preeminent benefactor, though the jocular occasionally raise a claim in favor of the original serpent.

  After all circumspection I really cannot dispute the judgment. My place in history is secure; my name will persist as if it were printed indelibly across the sky. All of which I find absurd but understandable. For I have given wealth beyond calculation. I have expunged deprivation, famine, overpopulation, territorial constriction: All the first-order causes of contention have vanished. My gifts go freely and carry with them my personal joy, but as a reasonable man (and for lack of other restrictive agency), I feel that I cannot relinquish all control, for when has the human animal ever been celebrated for abnegation and self-discipline?

  We now enter an era of plenty and a time of new concerns. The old evils are gone: we must resolutely prohibit a flamboyant and perhaps unnatural set of new vices.

  • • •

  The three girls gulped down breakfast, assembled their homework, and departed noisily for school.

  Elizabeth poured coffee for herself and Gilbert. He thought she seemed pensive and moody. Presently she said, “It’s so beautiful here…

  We’re very lucky, Gilbert.”

  “I never forget it.”

  Elizabeth sipped her coffee and mused a moment, following some vagrant train of thought. She said, “I never liked growing up. I always felt strange - differ
ent from the other girls. I really don’t know why.”

  “It’s no mystery. Everyone for a fact is different.”

  “Perhaps… But Uncle Peter and Aunt Emma always acted as if I were more different than usual. I remember a hundred little signals. And yet I was such an ordinary little girl… Do you remember when you were little?”

  “Not very well.” Gilbert Duray looked out the window he himself had glazed, across green slopes and down to the placid water his daughters had named the Silver River. The Sounding Sea was thirty miles south; behind the house stood the first trees of the Robber Woods.

  Duray considered his past. “Bob owned a ranch in Arizona during the 1870s: one of his fads. The Apaches killed my father and mother. Bob took me to the ranch, and then when I was three he brought me to Alan’s house in San Francisco, and that’s where I was brought up.” Elizabeth sighed. “Alan must have been wonderful. Uncle Peter was so grim. Aunt Emma never told me anything. Literally, not anything! They never cared the slightest bit for me, one way or the other… I wonder why Bob brought the subject up - about the Indians and your mother and father being scalped and all… He’s such a strange man.”

  “Was Bob here?”

  “He looked in a few minutes yesterday to remind us of his Rumfuddle.

  I told him I didn’t want to leave the girls. He said to bring them along.”

  “Hah!”

  “I told him I didn’t want to go to his damn Rumfuddle with or without the girls. In the first place, I don’t want to see Uncle Peter, who’s sure to be there…”

  • • •

  II

  From Memoirs and Reflections:

  I insisted then and I insist now that our dear old Mother Earth, so soiled and toil-worn, never be neglected. Since I pay the piper (in a manner of speaking), I call the tune, and to my secret amusement I am heeded most briskly the world around, in the manner of bellboys, jumping to the command of an irascible old gentleman who is known to be a good tipper. No one dares to defy me. My whims become actualities; my plans progress.

  Paris, Vienna, San Francisco, St. Petersburg, Venice, London, Dublin, surely will persist, gradually to become idealized essences of their former selves, as wine in due course becomes the soul of the grape. What of the old vitality? The shouts and curses, the neighborhood quarrels, the raucous music, the vulgarity? Gone, all gone! (But easy of reference at any of the cognates.) Old Earth is to be a gentle, kindly world, rich in treasures and artifacts, a world of old places - old inns, old roads, old forests, old palaces - where folk come to wander and dream, to experience the best of the past without suffering the worst.

  Material abundance can now be taken for granted: Our resources are infinite. Metal, timber, soil, rock, water, air: free for anyone’s taking. A single commodity remains in finite supply: human toil.

  • • •

  Gilbert Duray, the informally adopted grandson of Alan Robertson, worked on the Urban Removal Program. Six hours a day, four days a week, he guided a trashing machine across deserted Cuperinto, destroying tract houses, service stations, and supermarkets. Knobs and toggles controlled a steel hammer at the end of a hundred-foot boom; with a twitch of the finger, Duray toppled powerpoles, exploded picture windows, smashed siding and stucco, exploded picture windows, smashed siding and stucco, pulverized concrete. A disposal rig crawled fifty feet behind. The detritus was clawed upon a conveyor belt, carried to a twenty-foot orifice, and dumped with a rush and a rumble into the Apathetic Ocean. Aluminum siding, asphalt shingles, corrugated fiber-glass, TV’s and barbecues, Swedish Modern furniture, Book-of-the-Month selections, concrete patio-tiles, finally the sidewalk and street itself: all to the bottom of the Apathetic Ocean. Only the trees remained, a strange eclectic forest stretching as far as the eye could reach: liquidambar and Scotch pine; Chinese pistachio, Atlas cedar, and ginkgo; white birch and Norway maple.

  At one o’clock Howard Wirtz emerged from the caboose, as they called the small locker room at the rear of the machine. Wirtz had homesteaded a Miocene world; Duray, with a wife and three children, had preferred the milder environment of a contemporary semicognate: the popular Type A world on which man had never evolved.

  Duray gave Wirtz the work schedule. “More or less like yesterday - straight out Persimmon to Walden, then right a block and back.” Wirtz, a dour and laconic man, acknowledged the information with a jerk of the head. On his Miocene world he lived alone, in a houseboat on a mountain lake. He harvested wild rice, mushrooms, and berries; he shot geese, ground-fowl, deer, young bison, and had once informed Duray that after his five-year work-time he might just retire to his lake and never appear on Earth again, except maybe to buy clothes and ammunition. “Nothing here I want, nothing at all.”

  Duray had given a derisive snort. “And what will you do with all your time?”

  “Hunt, fish, eat, and sleep, maybe sit on the front deck.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “I just might learn to fiddle. Nearest neighbor is fifteen million years away.”

  “You can’t be too careful, I suppose.”

  Duray descended to the ground and looked over his day’s work: a quarter-mile swath of desolation. Duray, who allowed his subconscious few extravagances, nevertheless felt a twinge for the old times, which, for all their disadvantages, at least had been lively. Voices, bicycle bells, the barking of dogs, the slamming of doors, still echoed along Persimmon Avenue. The former inhabitants presumably preferred their new homes.

  The self-sufficient had taken private worlds; the more gregarious lived in communities on worlds of every description: as early as the Carboniferous, as current as the Type A. A few had even returned to the now-uncrowded cities. An exciting era to live in: a time of flux. Duray, thirty-four years old, remembered no other way of life; the old existence, as exemplified by Persimmon Avenue, seemed antique, cramped, constricted.

  He had a word with the operator of the trashing machine; returning to the caboose, Duray paused to look through the orifice across the Apathetic Ocean. A squall hung black above the southern horizon, toward which a trail of broken lumber drifted, ultimately to wash up on some unknown pre-Cambrian shore. There never would be an inspector sailing forth to protest; the world knew no life other than mollusks and algae, and all the trash of Earth would never fill its submarine gorges. Duray tossed a rock through the gap and watched the alien water splash up and subside. Then he turned away and entered the caboose.

  Along the back wall were four doors. The second from the left was marked “G. DURAY.” He unlocked the door, pulled it open, and stopped short, staring in astonishment at the blank back wall. He lifted the transparent plastic flap that functioned as an air-seal and brought out the collapsed metal ring that had been the flange surrounding his passway. The inner surface was bare metal; looking through, he saw only the interior of the caboose.

  A long minute passed. Duray stood staring at the useless ribbon as if hypnotized, trying to grasp the implications of the situation. To his knowledge no passway had ever failed, unless it had been purposefully closed. Who would play him such a spiteful trick? Certainly not Elizabeth.

  She detested practical jokes and if anything, like Duray himself, was perhaps a trifle too intense and literal-minded. He jumped down from the caboose and strode off across Cupertino Forest: a sturdy, heavy-shouldered man of about average stature. His features were rough and uncompromising; his brown hair was cut crisply short; his eyes glowed golden-brown and exerted an arresting force. Straight, heavy eyebrows crossed his long, thin nose like the bar of a T; his mouth, compressed against some strong inner urgency, formed a lower horizontal bar. All in all, not a man to be trifled with, or so it would seem.

  He trudged through the haunted grove, preoccupied by the strange and inconvenient event that had befallen him. What had happened to the passway? Unless Elizabeth had invited friends out to Home, as they called their world, she was alone, with the three girls at school… Duray came out upon Stevens Creek Road. A farmer’s pick
up truck halted at his signal and took him into San Jose, now little more than a country town.

  At the transit center he dropped a com in the turnstile and entered the lobby. Four portals designated “LOCAL.” “CALIFORNIA.” “NORTH AMERICA,” and “WORLD” opened in the walls, each portal leading to a hub on Utilis.

  *Utilis: a world cognate to Paleocene Earth, where, by Alan Robertson’s decree, all the industries, institutions, warehouses, tanks, dumps, and commercial offices of old Earth were now located. The name Utilis, so it had been remarked, accurately captured the flavor of Alan Robertson’s pedantic, quaint, and idealistic personality.

  Duray passed into the “California” hub, found the “Oakland” portal, returned to the Oakland Transit Center on Earth, passed back through the “Local” portal to the “Oakland” hub on Utilis, and returned to Earth through the “Montclair West” portal to a depot only a quarter mile from Thornhill School, to which Duray walked.