Eight Fantasms and Magics

by Jack Vance

  A handful of others, the Relicts, managed to exist, but only through a delicate set of circumstances. They were the ones most strongly charged with the old causal dynamic. It persisted sufficiently to control the metabolism of their bodies, but could extend no further. They were fast dying out, for sanity provided no leverage against the environment. Sometimes their own minds sputtered and jangled, and they would go raving and leaping out across the plain.

  The Organisms observed with neither surprise nor curiosity; how could surprise exist? The mad Relict might pause by an Organism, and try to duplicate the creature’s existence. The Organism ate a mouthful of plant; so did the Relict. The Organism rubbed his feet with crushed water; so did the Relict. Presently the Relict would die of poison or rent bowels or skin lesions, while the Organism relaxed in the dank black grass. Or the Organism might seek to eat the Relict; and the Relict would run off in terror, unable to abide any part of the world—running, bounding, breasting the thick air; eyes wide, mouth open, calling and gasping until finally he foundered in a pool of black iron or blundered into a vacuum pocket, to bat around like a fly in a bottle.

  The Relicts now numbered very few. Finn, he who crouched on the rock overlooking the plain, lived with four others. Two of these were old men and soon would die. Finn likewise would die unless he found food.

  Out on the plain one of the Organisms, Alpha, sat down, caught a handful of air, a globe of blue liquid, a rock, kneaded them together, pulled the mixture like taffy, gave it a great heave. It uncoiled from his hand like rope. The Relict crouched low. No telling what deviltry would occur in the creature. He and all the rest of them—unpredictable! The Relict valued their flesh as food; but the Organisms also would eat him if opportunity offered. In the competition he was at a great disadvantage. Their random acts baffled him. If, seeking to escape, he ran, the worst terror would begin. The direction he set his face was seldom the direction the varying frictions of the ground let him move. But the Organisms were as random and uncommitted as the environment, and the double set of disorders sometimes compounded, sometimes canceled each other. In the latter case the Organisms might catch him. .. .

  It was inexplicable. But then, what was not? The word “explanation” had no meaning.

  They were moving toward him; had they seen him? He flattened himself against the sullen yellow rock.

  The two Organisms paused not far away. He could hear their sounds, and crouched, sick from conflicting pangs of hunger and fear.

  Alpha sank to his knees, lay flat on his back, arms and legs flung out at random, addressing the sky in a series of musical cries, sibilants, guttural groans. It was a personal language he had only now improvised, but Beta understood him well.

  “A vision,” cried Alpha. “I see past the sky. I see knots, spinning circles. They tighten into hard points; they will never come undone.”

  Beta perched on a pyramid, glanced over his shoulder at the mottled sky.

  “An intuition,” chanted Alpha, “a picture out of the other time. It is hard, merciless, inflexible.”

  Beta poised on the pyramid, dove through the glassy surface, swam under Alpha, emerged, lay flat beside him.

  “Observe the Relict on the hillside. In his blood is the whole of the old race—the narrow men with minds like cracks. He has exuded the intuition. Clumsy thing—a blunderer,” said Alpha.

  “They are all dead, all of them,” said Beta. “Although three or four remain.” (When past, present, and future are no more than ideas left over from another era, like boats on a dry lake—then the completion of a process can never be defined.)

  Alpha said, “This is the vision. I see the Relicts swarming the Earth; then whisking off to nowhere, like gnats in the wind. This is behind us.”

  The Organisms lay quiet, considering the vision.

  A rock, or perhaps a meteor, fell from the sky, struck into the surface of the pond. It left a circular hole which slowly closed. From another part of the pool a gout of fluid splashed into the air, floated away.

  Alpha spoke: “Again—the intuition comes strong! There will be lights in the sky.”

  The fever died in him. He hooked a finger into the air, hoisted himself to his feet.

  Beta lay quiet. Slugs, ants, flies, beetles were crawling on him, boring, breeding. Alpha knew that Beta could arise, shake off the insects, stride off. But Beta seemed to prefer passivity. That was well enough. He could produce another Beta should he choose, or a dozen of him. Sometimes the world swarmed with Organisms, all sorts, all colors, tall as steeples, short and squat as flower pots.

  “I feel a lack,” said Alpha. “I will eat the Relict.” He set forth, and sheer chance brought him near to the ledge of yellow rock. Finn the Relict sprang to his feet in panic.

  Alpha tried to communicate so that Finn might pause while Alpha ate. But Finn had no grasp for the many-valued overtones of Alpha's voice. He seized a rock, hurled it at Alpha. The rock puffed into a cloud of dust, blew back into the Relict’s face.

  Alpha moved closer, extended his long arms. The Relict kicked. His feet went out from under him and he slid out on the plain. Alpha ambled complacently behind him. Finn began to crawl away. Alpha moved off to the right—one direction was as good as another. He collided with Beta and began to eat Beta instead of the Relict. The Relict hesitated; then approached and joining Alpha, pushed chunks of pink flesh into his mouth.

  Alpha said to the Relict, “I was about to communicate an intuition to him whom we dine upon. I will speak to you.”

  Finn could not understand Alpha’s personal language. He ate as rapidly as possible.

  Alpha spoke on. “There will be lights in the sky. The great lights.”

  Finn rose to his feet and warily watching Alpha, seized Beta’s legs, began to pull him toward the hill. Alpha watched with quizzical unconcern.

  It was hard work for the spindly Relict. Sometimes Beta floated; sometimes he wafted off on the air; sometimes he adhered to the terrain. At last he sank into a knob of granite which froze around him. Finn tried to jerk Beta loose, and then to pry him up with a stick, without success.

  He ran back and forth in an agony of indecision. Beta began to collapse, wither, like a jellyfish on hot sand. The Relict abandoned the hulk. Too late, too late! Food going to waste! The world was a hideous place of frustration!

  Temporarily his belly was full. He started back up the crag, and presently found the camp, where the four other Relicts waited—two ancient males, two females. The females, Gisa and Reak, like Finn, had been out foraging. Gisa had brought in a slab of lichen; Reak a bit of nameless carrion.

  The old men, Boad and Tagart, sat quietly waiting either for food or for death.

  The women greeted Finn sullenly. “Where is the food you went forth to find?"

  “I had a whole carcass," said Finn. “I could not carry it."

  Boad had slyly stolen the slab of lichen and was cramming it into his mouth. It came alive, quivered, and exuded a red ichor which was poison, and the old man died.

  “Now there is food," said Finn. “Let us eat.”

  But the poison created a putrescence; the body seethed with blue foam, flowed away of its own energy.

  The women turned to look at the other old man, who said in a quavering voice, “Eat me if you must—but why not choose Reak, who is younger than I?"

  Reak, the younger of the women, gnawing on the bit of carrion, made no reply.

  Finn said hollowly, “Why do we worry ourselves? Food is ever more difficult, and we are the last of all men."

  “No, no," spoke Reak. “Not the last. We saw others on the green mound.”

  “That was long ago," said Gisa. “Now they are surely dead."

  “Perhaps they have found a source of food," suggested Reak.

  Finn rose to his feet, looked across the plain. “Who knows? Perhaps there is a more pleasant land beyond the horizon."

  “There is nothing anywhere but waste and evil creatures,” snapped Gisa.

 
“What could be worse than here?” Finn argued calmly.

  No one could find grounds for disagreement.

  “Here is what I propose,” said Finn. “Notice this tall peak. Notice the layers of hard air. They bump into the peak, they bounce off, they float in and out and disappear past the edge of sight. Let us all climb this peak, and when a sufficiently large bank of air passes, we will throw ourselves on top, and allow it to carry us to the beautiful regions which may exist just out of sight.”

  There was argument. The old man Tagart protested his feebleness; the women derided the possibility of the bountiful regions Finn envisioned, but presently, grumbling and arguing, they began to clamber up the pinnacle.

  It took a long time; the obsidian was soft as jelly and Tagart several times professed himself at the limit of his endurance. But still they climbed, and at last reached the pinnacle. There was barely room to stand. They could see in all directions, far out over the landscape, till vision was lost in the watery gray.

  The women bickered and pointed in various directions, but there was small sign of happier territory. In one direction blue-green hills shivered like bladders full of oil. In another direction lay a streak of black—a gorge or a lake of clay. In another direction were blue-green hills—the same they had seen in the first direction; somehow there had been a shift. Below was the plain, gleaming like an iridescent beetle, here and there pocked with black spots, overgrown with questionable vegetation.

  They saw Organisms, a dozen shapes loitering by ponds, munching vegetable pods or small rocks or insects. There came Alpha. He moved slowly, still awed by his vision, ignoring the other Organisms. Their play went on, but presently they stood quiet, sharing the oppression.

  On the obsidian peak, Finn caught hold of a passing filament of air, drew it in. “Now—all on, and we sail away to the Land of Plenty.”

  “No," protested Gisa, “there is no room, and who knows if it will fly in the right direction?”

  “Where is the right direction?” asked Finn. “Does anyone know?”

  No one knew, but the women still refused to climb aboard the filament. Finn turned to Tagart. “Here, old one, show these women how it is; climb on!”

  “No, no,” Tagart cried. “I fear the air; this is not for me.”

  “Climb on, old man, then we follow.”

  Wheezing and fearful, clenching his hands deep into the spongy mass, Tagart pulled himself out onto the air, spindly shanks hanging over into nothing. “Now,” spoke Finn, “who next?”

  The women still refused. “You go then, yourself,” cried Gisa.

  “And leave you, my last guarantee against hunger? Aboard now!”

  “No. The air is too small; let the old one go and we will follow on a larger.”

  “Very well.” Finn released his grip. The air floated off over the plain, Tagart straddling and clutching for dear life.

  They watched him curiously. “Observe,” said Finn, “how fast and easily moves the air. Above the Organisms, over all the slime and uncertainty.”

  But the air itself was uncertain, and the old man’s raft dissolved. Clutching at the departing wisps, Tagart sought to hold his cushion together. It fled from under him, and he fell.

  On the peak the three watched the spindly shape flap and twist on its way to earth far below.

  “Now,” Reak exclaimed in vexation, “we even have no more meat.”

  “None,” said Gisa, “except the visionary Finn himself.”

  They surveyed Finn. Together they would more than outmatch him.

  “Careful,” cried Finn. “I am the last of the Men. You are women, subject to my orders.”

  They ignored him, muttering to each other, looking at him from the side of their faces.

  “Careful!” cried Finn. “I will throw you both from this peak.”

  “That is what we plan for you,” said Gisa.

  They advanced with sinister caution.

  “Stop! I am the last Man!”

  “We are better off without you.”

  “One moment! Look at the Organisms!”

  The women looked. The Organisms stood in a knot, staring at the sky.

  “Look at the sky!”

  The women looked; the frosted glass was cracking, breaking, curling aside.

  “The blue! The blue sky of old times!”

  A terribly bright light burnt down, seared their eyes. The rays warmed their naked backs.

  “The sun,” they said in awed voices. “The sun has come back to Earth.”

  The shrouded sky was gone; the sun rode in a sea of blue. The ground below churned, cracked, heaved, solidified. They felt the obsidian harden under their feet; its color shifted to glossy black. The Earth, the sun, the galaxy, had departed the region of freedom; the other time with its restrictions and logic was once more with them.

  “This is Old Earth,” cried Finn. “We are Men of Old Earth! The land is once again ours!”

  “And what of the Organisms?”

  “If this is the Earth of old, then let the Organisms beware!”

  The Organisms stood on a low rise of ground beside a runnel of water that was rapidly becoming a river flowing out onto the plain.

  Alpha cried, “Here is my intuition! It is exactly as I knew. The freedom is gone; the tightness, the constrictions are back!”

  “How will we defeat it?” asked another Organism.

  “Easily,” said a third. “Each must fight a part of the battle. I plan to hurl myself at the sun, and blot it from existence.” And he crouched, threw himself into the air. He fell on his back and broke his neck.

  “The fault,” said Alpha, “is in the air, because the air surrounds all things.”

  Six Organisms ran off in search of air and, stumbling into the river, drowned.

  “In any event,” said Alpha, “I am hungry.” He looked around for suitable food. He seized an insect which stung him. He dropped it. “My hunger remains.”

  He spied Finn and the two women descending from the crag. “I will eat one of the Relicts,” he said. “Come, let us all eat.”

  Three of them started off—as usual in random directions. By chance Alpha came face to face with Finn. He prepared to eat, but Finn picked up a rock. The rock remained a rock, hard, sharp, heavy. Finn swung it down, taking joy in the inertia. Alpha died with a crushed skull. One of the other Organisms attempted to step across a crevasse twenty feet wide and was engulfed; the other sat down, swallowed rocks to assuage his hunger and presently went into convulsions.

  Finn pointed here and there around the fresh new land. “In that quarter, the new city, like that of the legends. Over here the farms, the cattle.”

  “We have none of these,” protested Gisa.

  “No,” said Finn. “Not now. But once more the sun rises and sets, once more rock has weight and air has none. Once more water falls as rain and flows to the sea.” He stepped forward over the fallen Organism. “Let us make plans.”

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