Eight Fantasms and Magics

by Jack Vance

  “We have completely subdued the material world; we know the laws governing all the phenomena that our senses can detect. Now we turn ourselves into a new direction; humanity enters a new stage, and wonderful things lie before us.” He noticed a ripple of uneasiness running along the ranks of the Teleks. “This new world is on us, we can’t evade it. For sixty years the Teleks have rejoiced in a state of special privilege, and this is the last shackle humanity throws off: the idea that one man may dominate or control another man.”

  He paused; the uneasiness was ever more marked.

  “There are trying times to come—a period of severe readjustment. At the moment you are not quite certain to what I am referring, and that is just as well. Thank you for your attention and good-bye. I hope you enjoyed the program as much as I did.”

  He rose to his feet, stepped over Dominion's body, slid back the door, stepped out of the cupola.

  Teleks leaving the stadium rose up past him like May flies, some turning him curious glances as they flew. Shorn, smiling, watched them flit past, toward their glittering pavilions, their cloud-castles, their sea-bubbles. The last one was gone; he waved an arm after them as if in valediction.

  Then he himself rose, plunged westward toward the towers of Tran, where 265 men and women were already starting to spread telekinesis through all of mankind.

  Noise

  I

  Captain Hess placed a notebook on the desk and hauled a chair up under his sturdy buttocks. Pointing to the notebook, he said, “That's the property of your man Evans. He left it aboard the ship.’’

  Galispell asked in faint surprise, “There was nothing else? No letter?’’

  “No, sir, not a thing. That notebook was all he had when we picked him up.’’

  Galispell rubbed his fingers along the scarred fibers of the cover. ‘Understandable, I suppose.’’ He flipped back the cover. “Hmmmm.”

  Hess asked tentatively, “What's been your opinion of Evans? Rather a strange chap?’’

  “Howard Evans? No, not at all. He’s been a very valuable man to us. Why do you ask?’’

  Hess frowned, searching for the precise picture of Evans’s behavior. “I considered him erratic, or maybe emotional.’’

  Galispell was genuinely startled. “Howard Evans?”

  Hess’s eyes went to the notebook. “I took the liberty of looking through his log, and . . . well-”

  “And you took the impression he was . . . strange.” “Maybe everything he writes is true,” said Hess stubbornly. “But I’ve been poking into odd corners of space all my life and I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Peculiar situation,” said Galispell in a neutral voice. He looked into the notebook.

  II

  Journal of Howard Charles Evans

  I commence this journal without pessimism but certainly without optimism. I feel as if I have already died once. My time in the lifeboat was at least a foretaste of death. I flew on and on through the dark, and a coffin could be only slightly more cramped. The stars were above, below, ahead, astern. I have no clock, and I can put no duration to my drifting. It was more than a week, it was less than a year.

  So much for space, the lifeboat, the stars. There are not too many pages in this journal. I will need them all to chronicle my life on this world which, rising up under me, gave me life.

  There is much to tell and many ways in the telling. There is myself, my own response to this rather dramatic situation. But lacking the knack for tracing the contortions of my psyche, I will try to detail events as objectively as possible.

  I landed the lifeboat on as favorable a spot as I had opportunity to select. I tested the atmosphere, temperature, pressure, and biology; then I ventured outside. I rigged an antenna and dispatched my first SOS.

  Shelter is no problem; the lifeboat serves me as a bed, and, if necessary, a refuge. From sheer boredom later on I may fell a few of these trees and build a house. But I will wait; there is no urgency.

  A stream of pure water trickles past the lifeboat; I have abundant concentrated food. As soon as the hydroponic tanks begin to produce, there will be fresh fruits and vegetables and yeast proteins.

  Survival seems no particular problem.

  The sun is a ball of dark crimson, and casts hardly more light than the full moon of Earth. The lifeboat rests on a meadow of thick black-green creeper, very pleasant underfoot. A hundred yards distant in the direction I shall call south lies a lake of inky water, and the meadow slopes smoothly down to the water’s edge. Tall sprays of rather pallid vegetation—I had best use the word “trees”—bound the meadow on either side.

  Behind is a hillside, which possibly continues into a range of mountains; I can’t be sure. This dim red light makes vision uncertain after the first few hundred feet.

  The total effect is one of haunted desolation and peace. I would enjoy the beauty of the situation if it were not for the uncertainties of the future.

  The breeze drifts across the lake, smelling pleasantly fragrant, and it carries a whisper of sound from off the waves. I have assembled the hydroponic tanks and set out cultures of yeast. I shall never starve or die of thirst. The lake is smooth and inviting; perhaps in time I will build a little boat. The water is warm, but I dare not swim. What could be more terrible than to be seized from below and dragged under?

  There is probably no basis for my misgivings. I have seen no animal life of any kind: no birds, fish, insects, Crustacea. The world is one of absolute quiet, except for the whispering breeze.

  The scarlet sun hangs in the sky, remaining in place during many of my sleeps. I see it is slowly westering; after this long day how long and how monotonous will be the night!

  I have sent off four SOS sequences; somewhere a monitor station must catch them.

  A machete is my only weapon, and I have been reluctant to venture far from the lifeboat. Today (if I may use the word) I took my courage in my hands and started around the lake. The trees are rather like birches, tall and supple. I think the bark and leaves would shine a clear silver in light other than this wine-colored gloom. Along the lake-shore they stand in a line, almost as if long ago they had been planted by a wandering gardener. The tall branches sway in the breeze, glinting scarlet with purple overtones, a strange and wonderful picture which I am alone to see.

  I have heard it said that enjoyment of beauty is magnified in the presence of others: that a mysterious rapport comes into play to reveal subtleties which a single mind is unable to grasp. Certainly as I walked along the avenue of trees with the lake and the scarlet sun behind, I would have been grateful for companionship—but I believe that something of peace, the sense of walking in an ancient, abandoned garden, would be lost.

  The lake is shaped like an hourglass; at the narrow waist I could look across and see the squat shape of the lifeboat. I sat down under a bush, which continually nodded red and black flowers in front of me.

  Mist fibrils drifted across the lake and the wind made low musical sounds.

  I rose to my feet, continued around the lake.

  I passed through forests and glades and came once more to my lifeboat.

  I went to tend my hydroponic tanks, and I think the yeast had been disturbed, prodded at curiously.

  The dark red sun is sinking. Every day—it must be clear that I use “day” as the interval between my sleeps—finds it lower in the sky. Night is almost upon me, long night. How shall I spend my time in the dark?

  I have no gauge other than my mind, but the breeze seems colder. It brings long, mournful chords to my ears, very sad, very sweet. Mist-wraiths go fleeting across the meadow.

  Wan stars already show themselves, ghost-lamps without significance.

  I have been considering the slope behind my meadow; tomorrow I think I will make the ascent.

  I have plotted the position of every article I possess. I will be gone some hours; if a visitor meddles with my goods—I will know his presence for certain.

  The sun is low, t
he air pinches at my cheeks. I must hurry if I wish to return while light still shows me the landscape. I picture myself lost; I see myself wandering the face of this world, groping for my precious lifeboat, my tanks, my meadow.

  Anxiety, curiosity, obstinacy all spurring me, I set off up the slope at a half-trot.

  Becoming winded almost at once, I slowed my pace. The turf of the lakeshore had disappeared; I was walking on bare rock and lichen. Below me the meadow became a patch, my lifeboat a gleaming spindle. I watched for a moment. Nothing stirred anywhere in my range of vision.

  I continued up the slope and finally breasted the ridge. A vast valley fell off below me. Far away a range of great mountains stood into the dark sky. The wine-colored light slanting in from the west lit the prominences, the frontal bluffs, left the valleys in gloom: an alternate sequence of red and black beginning far in the west, continuing past, far to the east.

  I looked down behind me, down to my own meadow, and was hard put to find it in the fading light. There it was, and there the lake, a sprawling hourglass. Beyond was dark forest, then a strip of old rose savanna, then a dark strip of woodland, then laminae of colorings to the horizon.

  The sun touched the edge of the mountains, and with what seemed almost a sudden lurch, fell half below the horizon. I turned downslope; a terrible thing to be lost in the dark. My eye fell upon a white object, a hundred yards along the ridge. I walked nearer. Gradually it assumed form: a thimble, a cone, a pyramid—a cairn of white rocks.

  A cairn, certainly. I stood looking down on it.

  I turned, looked over my shoulder. Nothing in view. I looked down to the meadow. Swift shapes? I strained through the gathering murk. Nothing.

  I tore at the cairn, threw rocks aside. What was below?

  Nothing.

  In the ground a faintly marked rectangle three feet long was perceptible. I stood back. No power I knew of could induce me to dig into that soil.

  The sun was disappearing. Already at the south and north the afterglow began, lees of wine: the sun moved with astounding rapidity; what manner of sun was this, dawdling at the meridian, plunging below the horizon?

  I turned downslope, but darkness came faster. The scarlet sun was gone; in the west was the sad sketch of departed flame. I stumbled, I fell. I looked into the east. A marvelous zodiacal light was forming, a strengthening blue triangle.

  I watched, from my hands and knees. A cusp of bright blue lifted into the sky. A moment later a flood of sapphire washed the landscape. A new sun of intense indigo rose into the sky.

  The world was the same and yet different; where my eyes had been accustomed to red and the red subcolors, now I saw the intricate cycle of blue.

  When I returned to my meadow the breeze carried a new sound: bright chords that my mind could almost form into melody. For a moment I so amused myself, and thought to see dance-motion in the wisps of vapor which for the last few days had been noticeable over my meadow.

  In what I will call a peculiar frame of mind I crawled into the lifeboat and went to sleep.

  I crawled out of the lifeboat into an electric world. I listened. Surely that was music—faint whispers drifting in on the wind like a fragrance.

  I went down to the lake, as blue as a ball of that cobalt dye so aptly known as bluing.

  The music came louder; I could catch snatches of melody—sprightly, quick-step phrases. I put my hands to my ears; if I were experiencing hallucinations, the music would continue. The sound diminished, but did not fade entirely; my test was not definitive. But I felt sure it was real. And where music was there must be musicians. ... I ran forward, shouted, “Hello!”

  “Hello!” came the echo from across the lake.

  The music faded a moment, as a cricket chorus quiets when disturbed, then gradually I could hear it again—distant music, “horns of elf-land faintly blowing.”

  It went completely out of perception. I was left standing in the blue light, alone on my meadow.

  I washed my face, returned to the lifeboat, sent out another set of SOS signals.

  Possibly the blue day is shorter than the red day; with no clock I can’t be sure. But with my new fascination in the music and its source, the blue day seems to pass swifter.

  Never have I caught sight of the musicians. Is the sound generated by the trees, by diaphanous insects crouching out of my vision?

  One day I glanced across the lake, and—wonder of wonders!—a gay town spread along the opposite shore. After a first dumbfounded gaze, I ran down to the water’s edge, stared as if it were the most precious sight of my life.

  Pale silk swayed and rippled: pavilions, tents, fantastic edifices. . . . Who inhabited these places? I waded knee-deep into the lake, and thought to see flitting shapes.

  I ran like a madman around the shore. Plants with pale blue blossoms succumbed to my feet; I left the trail of an elephant through a patch of delicate reeds.

  And when I came panting to the shore opposite my meadow, what was there? Nothing.

  The city had vanished like a dream. I sat down on a rock. Music came clear for an instant, as if a door had momentarily opened.

  I jumped to my feet. Nothing to be seen. I looked back across the lake. There—on my meadow—a host of gauzy shapes moved like May flies over a still pond.

  When I returned, my meadow was vacant. The shore across the lake was bare.

  So goes the blue day; and now there is amazement to my life. Whence comes the music? Who and what are these flitting shapes, never quite real but never entirely out of mind? Four times an hour I press a hand to my forehead, fearing the symptoms of a mind turning in on itself. ... If music actually exists on this world, actually vibrates the air, why should it come to my ears as Earth music? These chords I hear might be struck on familiar instruments; the harmonies are not at all alien. . . . And these pale plasmic wisps that I forever seem to catch from the corner of my eye: the style is that of gay and playful humanity. The tempo of their movement is the tempo of the music.

  So goes the blue day. Blue air, blue-black turf, ultra-marine water, and the bright blue star bent to the west. . . . How long have I lived on this planet? I have broadcast the SOS sequence until now the batteries hiss with exhaustion; soon there will be an end to power. Food, water are no problem to me, but what use is a lifetime of exile on a world of blue and red?

  The blue day is at its close. I would like to mount the slope and watch the blue sun’s passing—but the remembrance of the red sunset still provokes a queasiness in my stomach. So I will watch from my meadow, and then, if there is darkness, I will crawl into the lifeboat like a bear into a cave, and wait the coming of light.

  The blue day goes. The sapphire sun wanders into the western forest, the sky glooms to blue-black, the stars show like unfamiliar home-places.

  For some time now I have heard no music; perhaps it has been so all-present that I neglect it.

  The blue star is gone, the air chills. I think that deep night is on me indeed. ... I hear a throb of sound, I turn my head. The east glows pale pearl. A silver globe floats up into the night: a great ball six times the diameter of Earth’s full moon. Is this a sun, a satellite, a burnt-out star? What a freak of cosmology I have chanced upon!

  The silver sun—I must call it a sun, although it casts a cool satin light—moves in an aureole like an oyster shell. Once again the color of the planet changes. The lake glistens like quicksilver, the trees are hammered metal. . . . The silver star passes over a high wrack of clouds, and the music seems to burst forth as if somewhere someone flung wide curtains.

  I wander down to the lake. Across on the opposite shore once more I see the town. It seems clearer, more substantial; I note details that shimmered away to vagueness before—a wide terrace beside the lake, spiral columns, a row of urns. The silhouette is, I think, the same as when I saw it under the blue sun: silken tents; shimmering, reflecting cusps of light; pillars of carved stone, lucent as milk-glass; fantastic fixtures of no obvious purpose. . . . Barges dri
ft along the quicksilver lake like moths, great sails bellying, the rigging a mesh of cobweb. Nodules of light hang on the stays, along the masts. . . . On sudden thought, I turn, look up to my own meadow. I see a row of booths as at an old-time fair, a circle of pale stone set in the turf, a host of filmy shapes.

  Step by step I edge toward my lifeboat. The music waxes. I peer at one of the shapes, but the outlines waver. It moves to the emotion of the music—or does the motion of the shape generate the music?

  I run forward, shouting. One of the shapes slips past me, and I look into a blur where a face might be. I come to a halt, panting hard; I stand on the marble circle. I stamp; it rings solid. I walk toward the booths, they seem to display complex things of pale cloth and dim metal—but as I look my eyes mist over as with tears. The music goes far, far away, my meadow lies bare and quiet. My feet press into silver-black turf; in the sky hangs the silver-black star.

  I am sitting with my back to the lifeboat, staring across the lake, which is still as a mirror. I have arrived at a set of theories.

  My primary proposition is that I am sane—a necessary article of faith; why bother even to speculate otherwise? So—events occurring outside my own mind cause everything I have seen and heard. But—note this!—these sights and sounds do not obey the laws of science; in many respects they seem particularly subjective.

  It must be, I tell myself, that both objectivity and subjectivity enter into the situation. I receive impressions which my brain finds unfamiliar, and so translates to the concept most closely related. By this theory the inhabitants of this world are constantly close; I move unknowingly through their palaces and arcades; they dance incessantly around me. As my mind gains sensitivity, I verge upon rapport with their way of life and I see them. More exactly, I sense something which creates an image in the visual region of my brain. Their emotions, the pattern of their life sets up a kind of vibration which sounds in my brain as music. . . . The reality of these creatures I am sure I will never know. They are diaphane, I am flesh; they live in a world of spirit, I plod the turf with my heavy feet.