by Jack Vance
Shierl groaned softly. “Guyal, Guyal, Guyal of Sfere— why did you choose me?”
“Because,” said Guyal, “you were the loveliest and I thought nothing but good in store for you.”
Shierl said, “I must be courageous; after all, if it were not I it would be some other maid equally fearful. . . . And there is the portal.”
Guyal inhaled deeply, inclined his head, and strode forward. “Let us be to it, and know.”
The portal opened into a wall supporting the first floor; a door of flat black metal. Guyal followed the trail to the door and rapped staunchly with his fist on the small copper gong to the side.
The door groaned wide on its hinges, and cool air, smelling of the under-earth, billowed forth.
“Hello within!” cried Guyal.
A soft voice, full of catches and quavers, as if just after weeping, said, “Come you, come you forward. You are desired and awaited.”
Guyal leaned his head forward, straining to see. “Give us light, that we may not wander from the trail and bottom ourselves.”
The breathless quaver of a voice said, “Light is not needed; anywhere you step, that will be your trail, by an arrangement so agreed with the Way-Maker.”
“No,” said Guyal, “we would see the visage of our host. We come at his invitation; the minimum of his courtesy is light; light there must be before we set foot inside the dungeon. Know we come as seekers after knowledge; we are visitors to be honored.”
“Ah, knowledge, knowledge,” came the sad breathlessness. “That shall be yours, in fullness; oh, you shall swim in a tide of knowledge-”
Guyal interrupted the sad, sighing voice. “Are you the Curator? Hundreds of leagues have I come to know the Curator and put him my inquiries. Are you he?”
“By no means. I revile the name of the Curator as a non-essential.”
“Who then may you be?”
“I am no one, nothing. I am an abstraction, an emotion, the shake in the air when a scream has departed.”
“You speak with the voice of man.”
“Why not? Such things as I speak lie in the dearest center of the human brain.”
Guyal said in a subdued voice, “You do not make your invitation as enticing as might be hoped.”
“No matter, no matter; enter you must, into the dark and on the instant.”
“If light there be, we enter.”
“No light, no insolent scorch, is ever found in the Museum.”
“In this case,” said Guyal, drawing forth his Scintillant Dagger, “I innovate a welcome reform. For see, now there is light!”
From the under-pommel issued a searching glare; the ghost tall before them screeched and fell into twinkling ribbons like pulverized tinsel. There were a few vagrant motes in the air; he was gone.
Shierl, who had stood stark and stiff as one mesmerized, gasped a soft warm gasp and fell against Guyal. “How can you be so defiant?”
Guyal said in a voice half-laugh, half-quaver, “In truth I do not know. . . . Perhaps I find it incredible that I should come from Sfere, through forest and across crag, into the northern waste, merely to play the role of victim. I disbelieve; I am bold.”
He moved the dagger to right and left, and they saw themselves to be at the portal of a keep, cut from concreted rock. At the back opened a black depth. Crossing the floor swiftly, Guyal kneeled and listened.
He heard no sound. Shierl, at his back, stared with eyes as black and deep as the pit itself.
Leaning with his glowing dagger, Guyal saw a crazy rack of stairs voyaging down into the dark, and his light showed them and their shadows in so confusing a guise that he blinked and drew back.
Shierl said, “What do you fear?”
Guyal rose. “We are momentarily untended here in the Museum of Man. If we stay here we shall be once more arranged in harmony with the hostile pattern. If we go forward boldly we may come to a position of advantage. I pro-
pose that we descend these stairs and seek the Curator.”
“But does he exist?”
“The ghost spoke fervently against him.”
“Let us go, then,” said Shierl. “I am resigned.”
“We go.”
They started down the stairs.
Back, forth, back, forth, down flights at varying angles, stages of varying heights, treads at varying widths, so that each step was a matter for concentration. Back, forth, down, down, down, and the black barred shadows moved and jerked in bizarre modes on the wall.
The flight ended; they stood in a room similar to the entry above, facing another black door, polished at one spot by use. On the walls to either side brass plaques carried messages in unfamiliar characters.
Guyal opened the door against a pressure of cold air, which, blowing through the aperture, made a slight rush, ceasing when Guyal opened the door farther.
“Listen.”
It was a far sound, an intermittent clacking, and it raised the hairs at Guyal’s neck. He felt Shierl’s hand gripping his with clammy pressure.
Dimming the dagger’s glow to a glimmer, Guyal passed through the door, with Shierl coming after. From afar came the evil sound, and by the echoes they knew they stood in a great hall.
Guyal directed the light to the floor: it was of a black resilient material. Next the wall: polished stone. He permitted the light to glow in the direction opposite to the sound, and a few paces distant they saw a bulky black case, studded with copper bosses.
With the purpose of the black case not apparent, they followed the wall, and as they walked similar cases appeared, looming heavy and dull, at regular intervals. The clacking receded as they walked; then they came to a right angle, and turning the corner, they seemed to approach the sound. Black case after black case passed; slowly, tense as foxes, they walked, eyes groping for sight through the darkness.
The wall made another angle, and here there was a door.
Guyal hesitated. To follow the new direction of the wall would mean approaching the source of the sound. Would it be better to discover the worst quickly or to reconnoiter as they went?
He propounded the dilemma to Shierl, who shrugged. “It is all one; sooner or later the ghosts will flit down to pluck at us; then we are lost.”
“Not while I possess light to stare them away to wisps and shreds,” said Guyal. “Now I would find the Curator. Possibly he is behind this door. We will so discover.”
He laid his shoulder to the door; it eased ajar with a crack of golden light. Guyal peered through. He sighed, a muffled sound of wonder.
Now he opened the door farther; Shierl clutched at his arm.
“This is the Museum,” said Guyal in rapt tone. “Here there is no danger.” He flung wide the door.
The light came from an unknown source, from the air itself, as if leaking from the discrete atoms; every breath was luminous, the room floated full of invigorating glow. Beautiful works of human fashioning ranked the walls: panels of rich woods; scenes of olden times; formulas of color, designed to convey emotion rather than reality. Here were representations of three hundred marvelous flowers no longer extant on waning Earth; as many star-burst patterns; a multitude of other creations.
The door thudded softly behind them; the two from Earth's final time moved forward through the hall.
“Somewhere near must be the Curator,” whispered Guyal. “There has been careful tending and great effort here.”
“Look.”
Opposite was a door which Guyal was unable to open, for it bore no latch, key, handle knob, or bar. He rapped with his knuckles and waited; no sound returned.
Shierl tugged at his arm. “These are private regions. It is best not to venture too rudely.”
Guyal turned away and they continued down the gallery, past the real expression of man’s brightest dreamings, until the concentration of so much fire and spirit put them into awe. “Great minds lie on the dust,” said Guyal. “Gorgeous souls have vanished. Nevermore will there be the like.” The room turn
ed a corner, widened. And now the clacking sound they had noticed in the dark outer hall returned, louder, more suggestive of unpleasantness. It seemed to enter the gallery through an arched doorway opposite.
Guyal moved quietly to this door, with Shierl at his heels, and so they peered into the next chamber.
A great face looked from the wall, a face taller than Guyal, as tall as Guyal might reach with hands on high. The chin rested on the floor, the scalp slanted back into the panel.
Guyal stared, taken aback. In this pageant of beautiful objects, the grotesque visage was the disparity and dissonance a lunatic might have created. Ugly and vile was the face. The skin shone a gun-metal sheen, the eyes gazed from slanting folds. The nose was a lump, the mouth a pulp.
Guyal turned to Shierl. ‘‘Does this not seem an odd work to be honored here in the Museum of Man?”
With hands jerking, she grabbed his arm, staggered back into the gallery.
“Guyal,” she cried, “Guyal, come away!”
He faced her in surprise. “What are you saying?”
“That horrible thing in there-”
“The diseased effort of an elder artist.”
“It lives.”
“How is this?”
“It lives!” she babbled. “It looked at me, then looked at you.”
Guyal shrugged off her hand; in disbelief he looked through the doorway.
The face had changed. The torpor had evaporated; the glaze had departed the eye. The mouth squirmed; a hiss of escaping gas sounded. The mouth opened; a gray tongue protruded, and from this tongue darted a tendril. It terminated in a grasping hand, which groped for Guyal’s neck. He jumped aside; the hand missed its clutch, the tendril coiled.
Guyal sprang back into the gallery. The hand seized Shierl, grasped her ankle. The eyes glistened; and now the flabby tongue sprouted a new member. . . . Shierl stumbled, fell limp, her eyes staring, foam at her lips. Guyal shouting in a voice he could not hear, ran forward with his dagger. He cut at the gray wrist, but his knife sprang away as if the steel itself were horrified. He seized the tendril; with a mighty effort he broke it against his knee.
The face winced, the tendril jerked back. Guyal dragged Shierl into the gallery, back out of reach.
Through the doorway now, Guyal glared in hate and fear. The mouth had closed; it sneered disappointment. From the dank nostril oozed a wisp of white which swirled, writhed, formed a tall thing in a white robe—a thing with a drawn face and eyes like holes in a skull. Whimpering and mewing in distaste for the light, it wavered forward into the gallery, moving with curious little pauses and hesitancies.
Guyal stood still. Fear had exceeded its power; fear no longer persuaded. A brain could react only to the maximum of its intensity; how could this thing harm him now? He would smash it with his hands, beat it into sighing fog.
“Hold, hold, hold!” came a new voice. “Hold, hold, hold. My charms and tokens, an ill day for Thorsingol. ... Be off with you, ghost, back to the orifice, back, I say! Go, else I loose the actinics; trespass is not allowed, by supreme command from the Lycurgat; aye, the Lycurgat of Thorsingol.” This was the voice of the old man who had hobbled into the gallery.
Back to the snoring face wandered the ghost, and let itself be sucked up into the nostril.
The face rumbled and belched a white fiery lick, flapping at the old man who moved not an inch. From a rod high on the door frame came a whirling disk of golden sparks, which cut and dismembered the white sheet, destroyed it back to the mouth of the face, whence now issued a black bar. This bar edged into the whirling disk and absorbed the sparks. There was an instant of dead silence.
Then the old man crowed, “Ah, you evil episode; you seek to interrupt my tenure. My clever baton holds you in abeyance; you are as naught. Disengage! Retreat into Jeldred!”
The mouth opened to display a gray viscous cavern; the eyes glittered in titanic emotion. The mouth yelled, a wave of sound to buffet the head and drive shock like a nail into the mind.
The baton sprayed a mist; the sound was captured and consumed; it was never heard.
The old man said, “You are captious today! You would disturb poor old Kerlin in his duties? So ho. Baton!" He turned and peered at the rod. “You have tasted that sound? Spew out a penalty."
The fog balled, struck at the nose, buried itself in the pulp. An explosion; the face seethed; the nose was a clutter of shredded gray plasms. They waved like starfish arms and grew together once more, and now the nose was pointed like a cone.
Kerlin the Curator laughed, a shrill yammer on a single tone. He stopped short and the laugh vanished as if it had never begun. He turned to Guyal and Shierl, who stood pressed together in the door frame.
“How now? You are after the gong; the study hours are ended. Why do you linger?" He shook a stern finger. “The Museum is not the site for roguery; this I admonish. So now be off, home to Thorsingol; be more prompt the next time; you disturb the order. . . .” He paused and threw a fretful glance over his shoulder. “The day has gone ill; the Nocturnal Key-keeper is inexcusably late. ... I have waited an hour on the sluggard; the Lycurgat shall be so informed. I would be home to couch and hearth; here is ill use for old Kerlin. And, further, the encroachment of you two laggards; away now, and be off; out into the twilight!” And he advanced, making directive motions with his hands.
Guyal said, “My lord Curator, I must speak with you.”
The old man halted, peered. “Eh? What now? At the end of a long day’s effort? No, no, you are out of order; regulation must be observed. Attend my audiarium at the fourth circuit tomorrow morning; then we shall hear you. So go now, go."
Guyal stood back, nonplussed. Shierl fell on her knees. “Sir Curator, we beg you for help; we have no place to go."
Kerlin the Curator looked at her blankly. “No place to go! What folly you utter! Go to your domicile, or to the Pubescentarium, or to the Temple, or to the Outward Inn. The Museum is no casual tavern.”
“My lord,” cried Guyal desperately, “will you hear me? We speak from emergency.”
“Say on then.”
“Some malignancy has bewitched your brain. Will you credit this?”
“Ah, indeed?” ruminated the Curator.
“There is no Thorsingol. There is naught but dark waste. Your city is an aeon gone.”
The Curator smiled benevolently. “A sad case. So it is with these younger minds.” He shook his head. “My duty is clear. Tired bones, you must wait your rest. Fatigue—begone; duty to humanity makes demands; here is madness to be countered and cleared. And in any event the Nocturnal Key-keeper is not here to relieve me of my tedium.” He beckoned. “Come.”
Hesitantly, Guyal and Shierl followed him. He opened one of his doors, passed through muttering and expostulating. Guyal and Shierl came after.
The room was cubical, floored with dull black stuff. A hooded chair occupied the center of the room and beside it was a chest-high lectern whose face displayed a number of toggles and knurled wheels.
“This is the Curator’s own Chair of Clarity,” explained Kerlin. “As such it will, upon proper adjustment, impose the Pattern of Hynomeneural Clarity.” He manipulated the manuals. “Now, if you will compose yourself I will repair your hallucination. It is beyond my call of duty, but I would not be spoken of as mean or unwilling.”
Guyal inquired anxiously, “Lord Curator, this Chair of Clarity, how will it affect me?”
Kerlin the Curator said grandly, “The fibers of your brain are snarled and frayed, and so make contact with unintentional areas. By the marvelous craft of our modern cerebrologists this hood will compose your synapses with the correct readings from the library—those of normality, you must understand—and so repair the skein, and make you once more a whole man.”
“Once I sit in the chair,” Guyal inquired, “What will you do?”
“Merely close this contact, engage this arm, throw in this toggle—then you daze. In thirty seconds, this bulb glows, signaling
the success and completion of the treatment. Then I reverse the manipulation and you arise a creature of renewed sanity.”
Guyal looked at Shierl. “Did you hear and comprehend?”
“Yes, Guyal.”
“Remember.” Then to the Curator: “Marvelous. But how must I sit?”
“Merely relax in the seat. Then I pull the hood slightly forward, to shield the eyes from distraction.”
Guyal leaned forward, peered gingerly into the hood. “I fear I do not understand.”
The Curator hopped forward impatiently. “It is an act of the utmost facility. Like this.” He sat in the chair.
“And how will the hood be applied?”
“In this wise.” Kerlin seized a handle, pulled the shield over his face.
“Quick,” said Guyal to Shierl. She sprang to the lectern; Kerlin the Curator made a motion to release the hood; Guyal seized the spindly frame, held it. Shierl flung the switches; the Curator relaxed, sighed.
Shierl gazed at Guyal, dark eyes wide and liquid as the great water-flamerian of South Almery. “Is he . . . dead?”
“I hope not.”
They gazed uncertainly at the relaxed form. Seconds passed.
A clanging noise sounded from afar—a crush, a wrench, an exultant bellow.
Guyal rushed to the door. Prancing, wavering, sidling into the gallery came a dozen ghosts; through the open door behind, Guyal could see the great head. It was shoving out, pushing into the room. Great ears appeared, part of a neck, wreathed with purple wattles. The wall cracked, sagged, crumbled. A great hand thrust through, a forearm. . . .
Shierl screamed. Guyal, pale and quivering, slammed the door in the face of the nearest ghost. It seeped around the jamb, wisp by wisp.
Guyal sprang to the lectern. The bulb showed dullness. Guyal’s hands twitched along the controls. “Only Kerlin’s awareness controls the magic of the baton,” he panted. “So much is clear.” he stared into the bulb with agonized urgency.
“Glow, bulb, glow. . . .”
The bulb glowed. With a sharp cry Guyal returned the switches to neutrality, jumped down, flung up the hood.
Kerlin the Curator sat looking at him.
