When the Five Moons Rise

by Jack Vance

  Luke slumped into a chair, scratched his long nose, looked cautiously around the rotunda. Nearby sat a big, bull-necked man with a red face, protruding lips, a shock of rank blond hair—a tycoon, judging from his air of absolute authority.

  Luke rose and went to a desk placed for the convenience of those waiting. He took several sheets of paper with the Tower letterhead and unobtrusively circled the rotunda to the entrance into Suite 42. The bull-necked tycoon paid him no heed.

  Luke girded himself, closing his collar, adjusting the set of his jacket. He took a deep breath, then, when the florid man glanced in his direction, came forward officiously. He looked briskly around the circle of couches, consulting his papers; then catching the eye of the tycoon, frowned, squinted, walked forward.

  “Your name, sir?” asked Luke in a official voice.

  “I’m Hardin Arthur,” rasped the tycoon. “Why?”

  Luke nodded, consulted his paper. “The time of your appointment?”

  “Eleven-ten. What of it?”

  “The Secretary would like to know if you can conveniently lunch with him at one-thirty?”

  Arthur considered. “I suppose it’s possible,” he grumbled. “I’ll have to rearrange some other business... .An inconvenience—but I can do it, yes.

  “Excellent,” said Luke. “At lunch the Secretary feels that he can discuss your business more informally and at greater length than at eleven-ten, when he can only allow you seven minutes.”

  “Seven minutes!” rumbled Arthur indignantly. “I can hardly spread my plans out in seven minutes.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Luke. “The Secretary realized this, and suggests that you lunch with him.”

  Arthur petulantly hauled himself to his feet. “Very well. Lunch at one-thirty, correct?”

  “Correct, sir. If you will walk directly into the Secretary’s office at that time.”

  Arthur departed the rotunda, and Luke settled into the seat Arthur had vacated.

  Time passed very slowly. At ten minutes after eleven the mellow voice called out, “Mr. Hardin Arthur, please. To the Office of the Secretary.”

  Luke rose to his feet, stalked with great dignity across the rotunda, and went through the bronze and black glass door.

  Behind a long black desk sat the Secretary, a rather undistinguished man with gray hair and snapping gray eyes. He raised his eyebrows as Luke came forward: Luke evidently did not fit his preconception of Hardin Arthur.

  The Secretary spoke. “Sit down, Mr. Arthur. 1 may as well tell you bluntly and frankly that we think your scheme is impractical. By ‘we’ I mean myself and the Board of Policy Evaluation—who of course have referred to the Files. First, the costs are excessive. Second, there’s no guarantee that you can phase your program into that of our other tycoons. Third, the Board of Policy Evaluation tells me that Files doubts whether we’ll need that much new capacity.”

  “Ah,” Luke nodded wisely. “I see. Well, no matter. It’s not

  important.”

  “Not important?” The Secretary sat up in his chair, stared at Luke in wonder. “I’m surprised to hear you say so.”

  Luke made an airy gesture. “Forget it. Life’s too short to worry about these things. Actually there’s another matter I want to discuss with you ” “Ah?”

  “It may seem trivial, but the implications are large. A former employee called the matter to my attention. He’s now a flunky on one of the sewer maintenance tunnel gangs, an excellent chap. Here’s the situa-

  tion. Some idiotic jacloin-office has issued a directive which forces this man to carry a shovel back and forth to the warehouse every day, before and after work. I’ve taken the trouble to follow up the matter and the chain leads here.” He displayed his three policy directives.

  Frowning, the Secretary glanced through them. “These all seem perfectly regular. What do you want me to do?”

  “Issue a directive clarifying the policy. After all, we can’t have these poor devils working three hours overtime for tomfoolishness.”

  “Tomfoolishness?” The Secretary was displeased. “Hardly that, Mr. Arthur. The economy directive came to me from the Board of Directors, from the Chairman himself, and if—”

  “Don’t mistake me,” said Luke hastily. “I’ve no quarrel with economy; I merely want the policy applied sensibly. Checking a shovel into the warehouse—where’s the economy in that?”

  “Multiply that shovel by a million, Mr. Arthur,” said the Secretary coldly.

  “Very well, multiply it,” argued Luke. “We have a million shovels. How many of these million shovels are conserved by this order? Two or three a year?”

  The Secretary shrugged. “Obviously in a general directive of this sort, inequalities occur. So far as I’m concerned, I issued the directive because I was instructed to do so. If you want it changed you’ll have to consult the Chairman of the Board.”

  “Very well. Can you arrange an appointment for me?”

  “Let’s settle the matter even sooner,” said the Secretary. “Right now. We 11 talk to him across the screen, although, as you say, it seems a trivial matter....”

  “Demoralization of the working force isn’t trivial, Secretary Sepp.”

  The Secretary shrugged, touched a button, spoke into a mesh. “The Chairman of the Board, if he’s not occupied.”

  The screen glowed. The Chairman of the Board of Directors looked out at them. He sat in a lounge chair on the deck of his penthouse at the pinnacle of the tower. In one hand he held a glass of pale effervescent liquid; beyond him opened sunlight and blue air and a wide glimpse of the miraculous city.

  “Good morning, Sepp,” said the Chairman cordially, and nodded toward Luke. “Good morning to you, sir.”

  “Chairman, Mr. Arthur here is protesting the economy directive you sent down a few days ago. He claims that strict application is causing hardship among the labor force: demoralization, actually. Something to do with shovels.”

  The Chairman considered. “Economy directive? I hardly recall the exact case.”

  Secretary Sepp described the directive, citing code and reference

  numbers, explaining the provisions, and the Chairman nodded in recollection. “Yes, the metal shortage thing. Afraid I can’t help you, Sepp, or you, Mr. Arthur. Policy Evaluation sent it up. Apparently we’re running short of minerals; what else can we do? Cinch in the old belts, eh? Hard on all of us. What’s this about shovels?”

  “It’s the whole matter,” cried Luke in sudden shrillness, evoking startled glances from Secretary and Chairman. “Carrying a shovel back and forth to the warehouse—three hours a day! It’s not economy, it’s a disorganized farce!”

  “Come now, Mr. Arthur,” the Chairman chided humorously. “So long as you’re not carrying the shovel yourself, why the excitement? It works the very devil with one’s digestion. Until Policy Evaluation changes its collective mind—as it often does—then we’ve got to string along. Can’t go counter to Policy Evaluation, you know. They’re the people with the facts and figures.”

  “Neither here nor there,” mumbled Luke. “Carrying a shovel three hours—”

  “Perhaps a bit of bother for the men concerned,” said the Chairman with a hint of impatience, “but they’ve got to see the thing from the long view. Sepp, perhaps you’ll lunch with me? A marvelous day, lazy weather.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’ll be pleased indeed.”

  “Excellent. At one or one-thirty, whenever it’s convenient for you.”

  The screen went blank. Secretary Sepp rose to his feet. “There it is,

  Mr. Arthur. I can’t do any more.”

  “Very well, Mr. Secretary,” said Luke in a hollow voice.

  “Sorry I can’t be of more help in that other matter, but as I say—”

  “It’s inconsequential.”

  Luke turned, left the elegant office, passed through the bronze and black glass doors into the rotunda. Through the arch into Suite 42 he saw a large, bull-necked man, tomato
-red in the face, hunched forward across a counter. Luke stepped forward smartly, leaving the rotunda just as the authentic Mr. Arthur and the aide came forth, deep in agitated conversation.

  Luke stopped by the information desk. “Where is the Policy Evaluation Board?”

  “Twenty-ninth Level, sir, this building.”

  In Policy Evaluation on the 29th Level Luke talked with a silk- mustached young man, courtly and elegant, with the status classification Plan Coordinator. “Certainly!” exclaimed the young man in response to Luke’s question. “Authoritative information is the basis of authoritative organization. Material from Files is collated and digested in the Bureau of Abstracts, and sent up to us. We shape it and present it to the Board of Directors in the form of a daily precis.”

  Luke expressed interest in the Bureau of Abstracts, and the young man quickly became bored. “Grubbers among the statistics, barely able to compose an intelligible sentence. If it weren’t for us....” His eyebrows, silken as his mustache, hinted of the disasters which in the absence of Policy Evaluation would overtake the Organization. “They work in a suite down on the Sixth Level.”

  Luke descended to the Bureau of Abstracts, and found no difficulty gaining admission to the general office. In contrast to the rather nebulous intellectualism of Policy Evaluation, the Bureau of Abstracts seemed workaday and matter-of-fact. A middle-aged woman, cheerfully fat, inquired Luke’s business, and when Luke professed himself a journalist, conducted him about the premises. They went from the main lobby, walled in antique cream-colored plaster with gold scrollwork, past the fusty cubicles, where clerks sat at projection-desks, scanning ribbons of words. Extracting idea-sequence, amending, excising, condensing, cross- referring, finally producing the abstract to be submitted to Policy Evaluation. Luke’s fat and cheerful guide brewed them a pot of tea; she asked questions which Luke answered in general terms, straining his voice and pursing his mouth in the effort to seem agreeable and hearty. He himself asked questions.

  “I’m interested in a set of statistics on the scarcity of metals, or ores, or something similar, which recently went up to Policy Evaluation. Would you know anything about this?”

  “Heavens, no!” the woman responded. “There’s just too much material coming in—the business of the entire Organization.

  “Where does this material come from? Who sends it to you?”

  The woman made a humorous little grimace of distaste. “From Files, down on Sublevel Twelve. 1 can’t tell you much, because we don’t associate with the personnel. They’re low status: clerks and the like. Sheer automatons.”

  Luke expressed an interest in the source of the Bureau of Abstract’s information. The woman shrugged, as if to say, everyone to his own taste. “I’ll call down to the Chief File Clerk; I know him, very slightly.”

  The Chief File Clerk, Mr. Sidd Boatridge, was self-important and brusque, as if aware of the low esteem in which he was held by the Bureau of Abstracts. He dismissed Luke’s questions with a stony face of indifference. “1 really have no idea, sir. We file, index, and cross-index material into the Information Bank, but we concern ourselves very little with outgoing data. My duties in fact are mainly administrative. I’ll call in one of the under-clerks; he can tell you more than I can.”

  The under-clerk who answered Boatridge’s summons was a short, turnip-faced man with matted red hair. “Take Mr. Grogatch into the

  outer office,” said the Chief File Clerk testily. “He wants to ask you a few questions.”

  In the outer office, out of the Chief File Clerk’s hearing, the under- clerk became rather surly and pompous, as if he had divined the level of Luke’s status. He referred to himself as a “line-tender” rather than as a file clerk, the latter apparently being a classification of lesser prestige. His “line-tending” consisted of sitting beside a panel which glowed and blinked with a thousand orange and green lights. “The orange lights indicate information going down into the Bank,” said the file clerk. “The green lights show where somebody up-level is drawing information out— generally at the Bureau of Abstracts.”

  Luke observed the orange and green flickers for a moment. “What information is being transmitted now?”

  “Couldn’t say,” the file clerk grunted. “It’s all coded. Down in the old office we had a monitoring machine and never used it. Too much else to do.”

  Luke considered. The file clerk showed signs of restiveness. Luke’s mind worked hurriedly. He asked, “So—as I understand it—you file information, but have nothing further to do with it?”

  “We file it and code it. Whoever wants information puts a program into the works and the information goes out to him. We never see it, unless we go and look in the old monitoring machine.”

  “Which is still down at your old office?”

  The file clerk nodded. “They call it the staging chamber now. Nothing there but input and output pipes, the monitor, and the custodian.”

  “Where is the staging chamber?”

  “Way down the levels, behind the Bank. Too low for me to work. I got more ambition.” For emphasis he spat on the floor.

  “A custodian is there, you say?”

  “An old junior executive named Dodkin. He’s been there a hundred years.”

  Luke dropped thirty levels aboard an express lift, then rode the down escalator another six levels to Sublevel 46. He emerged on a dingy landing with a low-perquisite nutrition hall to one side, a life attendant’s dormitory to the other. The air carried the familiar reek of the deep underground, a compound of dank concrete, phenol, mercaptans, and a discreet but pervasive human smell. Luke realized with bitter amusement that he had returned to familiar territory.

  Following instructions grudgingly detailed by the under-file clerk, Luke stepped aboard a chattering man-belt labeled 902—Tanks. Presently he came to a brightly lit landing marked by a black and yellow sign:

  INFORMATION TANKS. TECHNICAL STATION.

  Inside the door a number of mechanics sat on stools, dangling their legs, lounging, chaffering.

  Luke changed to a side-belt, even more dilapidated, almost in a state of disrepair. At the second junction—this one unmarked—he left the man-belt and turned down a narrow passage toward a far yellow bulb. The passage was silent, almost sinister in its dissociation from the life of the city.

  Below the single yellow bulb a dented metal door was daubed with a

  sign:

  INFORMATION TANKS—STAGING CHAMBER

  NO ADMITTANCE

  Luke tested the door and found it locked. He rapped and waited.

  Silence shrouded the passage, broken only by a faint sound from the distant man-belt.

  Luke rapped again, and now from within came a shuffle of movement. The door slid back and a pale placid eye looked forth. A rather weak voice inquired, “Yes, sir?”

  Luke attempted a manner of easy authority. “You’re Dodkin the custodian?”

  “Yes, sir, I’m Dodkin.”

  “Open up, please. I’d like to come in.”

  The pale eye blinked in mild wonder. “This is only the staging room, sir. There’s nothing here to see. The storage complexes are around to the front; if you’ll go back to the junction—”

  Luke broke into the flow of words. “I’ve just come down from the Files; it’s you I want to see.”

  The pale eye blinked once more; the door slid open. Luke entered the long, narrow, concrete-floored staging room. Conduits dropped from the ceiling by the thousands, bent, twisted, and looped, and entered the wall, each conduit labeled with a dangling metal tag. At one end of the room was a grimy cot where Dodkin apparently slept; at the other end was a long black desk: the monitoring machine? Dodkin himself was small and stooped, but moved nimbly in spite of his evident age. His white hair was stained but well brushed; his gaze, weak and watery, was without guile, and fixed on Luke with an astronomer’s detachment. He opened his mouth, and words quavered forth in spate, with Luke vainly seeking to interrupt.

  �
��Not often do visitors come from above. Is something wrong?”

  “No, nothing wrong.”

  “They should tell me if aught isn’t correct, or perhaps there’s been new policies of which I haven’t been notified.”

  “Nothing like that, Mr. Dodkin. I’m just a visitor—”

  “1 don’t move out as much as I used to, but last week I—”

  Luke pretended to listen while Dodkin maundered on in obbligato to Luke’s bitter thoughts. The continuity of directives leading from Fedor Miskitman to Lavester Limon to Judiath Ripp, bypassing Parris deVicker to Sewell Sepp and the Chairman of the Board, then returning down the classifications, down the levels, through the Policy Evaluation Board, the Bureau of Abstracts, the File Clerk’s Office—the continuity had finally ended; the thread he had traced with such forlorn hope seemed about to lose itself. Well, Luke told himself, he had accepted Miskitman’s challenge; he had failed, and now was faced with his original choice. Submit, carry the wretched shovel back and forth to the warehouse, or defy the order, throw down his shovel, assert himself as a free-willed man, and be declassified, to become a junior executive like old Dodkin—who, sucking and wheezing, still rambled on in compulsive loquacity.

  “.. .Something incorrect, I’d never know, because who ever tells me? From year end to year end I’m quiet down here, and there’s no one to relieve me, and I only get to the up-side rarely, once a fortnight or so, but then once you’ve seen the sky, does it every change? And the sun, the

  marvel of it, but once you’ve seen a marvel—”

  Luke drew a deep breath. u I’m investigating an item of information which reached the File Clerk’s Office. I wonder if you can help me.”

  Dodkin blinked his pale eyes. “What item is this, sir? Naturally I’ll be

  glad to help in any way, even though—”

  “The item dealt with economy in the use of metals and metal tools.

  Dodkin nodded. “I remember them perfectly.”

  It was Luke’s turn to stare. “You remember this item?”

  “Certainly. It was, if I may say so, one of my little interpolations. A personal observation which I included among the other material.