by Jack Vance
“He thought you were duping.”
“Yes. Something of the sort. Do you know why he was concerned?”
“No.” And Ghyl added loyally, “It seemed silly to me.”
“Well—not altogether. In Fortinone we live or die by trade, and we guarantee hand-crafted wares. Duplicating, molding, casing—all are prohibited. We make no two objects alike, and the Guild Delegates enforce the rule.”
“What of the lords?” asked Ghyl. “What guild do they belong to? What do they produce?”
Amiante gave a painful grimace: half-smile, half-wince. “They are folk apart. They belong to no guilds.”
“How do they earn their vouchers?” demanded Ghyl.
“Very simply,” said Amiante. “Long ago there was a great war. Ambroy was left in ruins. The lords came here and spent many vouchers in reconstruction: a process called investment. They restored the facilities for the water supply, laid down the Overtrend tubes, and so forth. So now we pay for use of these facilities.”
“Hmmf,” said Ghyl. “I thought we received water and power and things like that as part of our free welfare benefits.”
“Nothing is free,” remarked Amiante. “Unless a person steals, whereupon, sooner or later, in one way or another, he pays for his stealing. So there you have it. The lords take a part of all our money: 1.18 percent to be exact.”
Ghyl reflected a moment. “Is that a great deal?”
“It seems adequate,” said Amiante drily. “There are three million recipients in Fortinone and about two hundred lords—six hundred counting ladies and lordlings.” Amiante pulled at his lower lip. “It makes an interesting calculation…Three million recipients, six hundred noble-folk. One noble for each five thousand recipients. On a basis of 1.18 percent—call it one percent—it would appear that each lord receives the income of fifty recipients.” Amiante seemed perplexed by the results of his computation. “Even lords must find it hard to spend so lavishly…Well, then, it is not our affair. I give them their percentage and gladly. Although it is indeed somewhat puzzling…Do they throw money away? Give to far charities? When I was correspondent I should have thought to ask.”
“What is a ‘correspondent’?”
“Nothing of importance. A position which I held a long time ago, when I was young. A time long past, I fear.”
“It does not mean being a lord?”
Amiante chuckled. “Certainly not. Do I resemble a lord?”
Ghyl examined him critically. “I suppose not. How does one become a lord?”
“By birth.”
“But—what of Rudel and Marelvie at the puppet play? Did they not receive utility fiefs and become lords?”
“Not really. Desperate noncups, and sometimes recipients, have kidnaped lords and forced them to yield fiefs and great sums of money. The kidnapers would be financially independent, they might call themselves lords, but they never dared mingle with the true lords. Finally the lords bought Garrion guards from the Damar puppet-makers; and now there are few kidnapings. Additionally the lords have agreed to pay no more ransom if kidnaped. So a recipient or a noncup can never be a lord, even should he wish to be.”
“When Lord Bodbozzle wanted to marry Marelvie, would she have become a lady? Would their children have been lords?”
Amiante put down his tools and carefully considered his answer. “Very often the lords take mistresses—lady-friends—from among the recipients,” he said, “but are careful never to breed children. They are a race apart and apparently intend to keep themselves so.”
The amber panes of the outside door darkened; it burst open and Helfred Cobol entered the shop. He stood frowning portentously toward Ghyl, whose heart sank into his shoes. Helfred Cobol turned to Amiante. “I have just read my noon briefing sheet. There is a red notation in reference to your son Ghyl: an offense of trespass and careless risk. The apprehension was made by the Ward 12B, Vashmont Precinct, welfare agent. He reports that Ghyl had climbed the girders of Lord Waldo the Flowan’s tower to a dangerous and illegal height, committing an offense against Lord Waldo, and against the precincts of Vashmont and Brueben by incurring risk of hospitalization.”
Amiante, brushing chips from his apron, blew out his cheeks. “Yes, yes. The lad is quite active.”
“Far too active! In fact, irresponsible! He prowls at will, night and day. I have seen him slinking home after dark drenched to the skin with rain! He roams the city like a thief; he learns nothing but shiftlessness! I cannot believe that this is a benign situation. Do you have no concern for the child’s future?”
“No hurry there,” replied Amiante in an airy tone. “The future is long.”
“A man’s life is short. High time he was introduced to his calling! I assume you intend him for a wood-carver?”
Amiante shrugged. “As good a trade as any.”
“He should be under instruction. Why do you not send him to the guild-school?”
Amiante tested the edge of the chisel against his thumbnail. “Let him enjoy his innocence,” he said in a gruff voice. “He will know drudgery enough in his lifetime.”
Helfred Cobol started to speak, then stopped. He gave a grunt which might have meant anything. “Another matter: why does he not attend Voluntary Temple Exercises?”
Amiante put down his chisel, frowned rather foolishly, as if he were puzzled. “As to that, I don’t know. I have never asked him.”
“You teach him leaps at home?”
“Well, no. I do small leaping myself.”
“Hmmf. You should enjoin him to such matters regardless of your own habits.”
Amiante turned his eyes toward the ceiling, then picked up his chisel and attacked a panel of aromatic arzack which he had just clamped to his bench. The design was already laid out: a grove of trees with long-haired maidens fleeing a satyr. The apertures and rough differences of relief were indicated by chalk-marks. Using a metal straight-bar as a guide for his thumb, Amiante began to gouge into the wood.
Helfred Cobol came across the room to watch. “Very handsome…What is that wood? Kodilla? Boligam? One of those South Continent hardwoods?”
“Arzack, from the woods back of Perdue.”
“Arzack! I had no idea it gave so large a panel! The trees are never more than three feet through.”
“I pick my trees,” Amiante explained patiently. “The foresters cut the trunks into seven-foot lengths. I rent a vat at the dye-works. The logs soak in chemical for two years. I remove the bark, make a single two-inch cut up the trunk: about thirty laminae. I peel off the outer two inches entirely around the trunk, to secure a slab seven feet high by six to nine feet long. This goes into a press, and when it dries I scrape it flat.”
“Hm. You peel the layer off yourself?”
“Yes.”
“With no complaints from the Carpenters’ Guild?”
Amiante shrugged. “They can’t or won’t do the work. I have no choice. Even if I wanted any.” The last was a muttered afterthought.
Helfred Cobol said tersely, “If everyone acted to his own taste we’d live like Wirwans.”
“Perhaps.” Amiante continued to shave wood from the arzack slab. Helfred Cobol picked up one of the curls, smelled it. “What is the odor: wood or chemical?”
“A little of both. New arzack is rather more peppery.”
Helfred Cobol heaved a sigh. “I’d like a screen like that, but my stipend barely keeps me alive. I don’t suppose you have any rejects you’d part with.”
Amiante glanced expressionlessly sidewise. “Talk to the Boimarc lords. They take all my screens. The Rejects they burn, the Seconds they lock in a warehouse, the Acmes and Firsts they export. Or so I suppose, since I am not consulted. I would earn more vouchers if I did my own marketing.”
“We must maintain our reputation,” declared Helfred Cobol in a heavy voice. “In the far worlds, to say ‘a piece from Ambroy’ is to say ‘a jewel of perfection’!”
“Admiration is gratifying,” said Amiante, “but
it gains remarkably few vouchers.”
“What would you have? The markets flooded with brummagem?”
“Why not?” asked Amiante, continuing with his work. “Acmes and Firsts would shine by comparison.”
Helfred Cobol shook his head in dissent. “Merchandising is not all that simple.” He watched a moment or two longer, then laid his finger on the straight-bar. “Better not let the Guild Delegate see you working with a guide device. He’d bring you before the committee for duping.”
Amiante looked up in mild astonishment. “No duplicating here.”
“The action of the bar against your thumb allows you to carry along or duplicate a given depth of cut.”
“Bah,” muttered Amiante. “Pettifoggery. Utter nonsense.”
“A friendly warning, no more,” said Helfred Cobol. He glanced aside to Ghyl. “Your father’s a good craftsman, lad, but perhaps a trifle vague and unworldly. Now my advice to you is to give over this wandering and prowling, by day and by night. Apply yourself to a trade. Wood-carving, or if you want something different, the Guild Council can offer a choice where shortages exist. Myself, I believe you’d do best with wood-carving. Amiante has much to teach you.” Helfred Cobol turned the briefest of glances at the straight-bar. “Another matter: you’re not too young for the Temple. They’ll put you at easy leaps, and teach you proper doctrine. But keep on like you’re going, you’ll end up a vagrant or a noncup.”
Helfred Cobol gave Amiante a curt nod and departed the shop.
Ghyl went to the door, watched Helfred Cobol cross Undle Square. Then he slowly closed the door—another slab of dark arzack into which Amiante had set bulbs of crude amber glass—and came slowly across the room. “Do I have to go to the Temple?”
Amiante grunted. “Helfred Cobol is not to be taken altogether seriously. He says certain things because this is his job. I daresay he sends his own children to Saltation, but I doubt if he leaps any more zealously than I do.”
“Why are all welfare agents named Cobol?”
Amiante drew up a stool, poured himself a cup of bitter black tea. He sipped thoughtfully. “Long ago, when the capital of Fortinone was at Thadeus, up the coast, the Welfare Supervisor was a man named Cobol. He appointed all his brothers and nephews to good jobs, so that shortly there were only Cobols in the Welfare Department. So it is today; and welfare agents who are not born Cobols—most of them are, of course—change their names. It is simply a matter of tradition. Ambroy is a city of many traditions. Some are useful, some not. A Mayor of Ambroy is elected every five years, but he has no function; he does nothing but draw his stipend. A tradition, but useless.”
Ghyl looked at his father respectfully. “You know almost everything, don’t you? No one else knows such things.”
Amiante nodded rather glumly. “Such knowledge earns no vouchers, however… Ah well, enough of this.” He drained his cup of tea. “It seems that I must train you to carve wood, to read and write…Come here then. Look at these gouges and chisels. First you must learn their names. This is a plow. This is a No. 2 elliptical gouge. This is a lazy-tang…”
Chapter IV
Amiante was not a demanding taskmaster. Ghyl’s life proceeded much as before, though he climbed no more towers.
Summer came to Ambroy. There were rains and great thunderstorms, then a period of beautiful clear weather during which the half-ruined city seemed almost beautiful. Amiante aroused himself from his musing and in a great burst of energy took Ghyl on a walking-trip up the Insse River, into the foothills of the Meagher Mounts. Ghyl had never before been so far from home. In contrast to the dilapidations of Ambroy, the countryside seemed remarkably fresh and open. Tramping along the riverbank under the purple banion trees, they would often pause to gaze wistfully at some especially pleasant situation—an island, shaded under banion and water-willow, with a little house, a dock, a skiff; or perhaps a houseboat moored to the bank, with children swimming in the river, their parents lounging on the deck with mugs of beer. At night they slept on beds of leaves and straw, their fire flickering and glowing to coals. Overhead burned the stars of the galaxy and Amiante pointed out those few he knew: the Mirabilis Cluster, Glysson, Heriartes, Cornus, Alode. To Ghyl these were names of sheer magic.
“Someday,” he told Amiante, “when I am bigger, we’ll carve lots of screens and save all our vouchers; then we’ll travel: to all those stars, and the Five Jeng Worlds as well!”
“That would be very nice,” said Amiante with a grin. “I’d better put more arzack down into chemical so that we’ll have sufficient panels.”
“Do you think we could buy a space-yacht and travel as we wished?”
Amiante shook his head. “They cost far too much. A hundred thousand vouchers, often more.”
“Couldn’t we save that much, if we worked very hard?”
“We’d be working and saving all our lives, and still never have enough. Space-yachts are for lords.”
They passed Brazen and Grigglesby Corners and Blonnet, then turned aside into the hills. At last, weary and footsore, they returned home, and indeed Amiante spent precious vouchers to ride Overtrend the last twenty miles through Riverside Park, Vashmont, Hoge.
For a period Amiante, as if himself convinced of the soundness of Ghyl’s proposals, worked with great diligence. Ghyl helped as best he could and practised the use of chisels and augers, but vouchers came in with discouraging slowness. Amiante’s diligence waned; he resumed his old habits of working and musing, staring into space for minutes at a time; and presently Ghyl lost interest as well. There must be some other, faster, system by which to earn vouchers: gambling, for instance. Kidnaping of lords was irregulationary; Ghyl knew that his father would never hear of such a proposal.
The summer proceeded: a halcyon time, perhaps the happiest of Ghyl’s life. In all the city, his favorite resort was Dunkum’s Heights in Veige Precinct, north of Brueben, a grassy-topped shoulder of ground beside the estuary. Dozens of fresh mornings and as many hazy afternoons Ghyl climbed Dunkum’s Heights, sometimes alone, sometimes with his friend Floriel, a big-eyed waif with pale skin, fragile features, a mop of thick black hair. Floriel lived with his mother, who worked in the brewery, sectioning and cleaning big purple hollips, from which the brew derived its characteristic musty flavor. She was a large ribald woman, not without vanity, who claimed to be second cousin to the Mayor. Hollip odor permeated Floriel’s mother, her person and all her belongings, and even attached itself to Floriel, and ever afterward, whenever Ghyl drank beer, or caught the tart musk of hollips at the market, he would recall Floriel and his wan ragamuffin face.
Floriel was a companion exactly suited to Ghyl’s tastes: a lad mild and acquiescent, but by no means lacking in energy or imagination, and ripe for any adventure. The two boys spent many happy hours on Dunkum’s Heights, basking in the tawny sunlight, chewing the soft grass, watching the flight of shrinken-birds over the mud-flats.
Dunkum’s Heights was a place to laze and dream; in contrast, the space-port, in Godero Precinct, east of Dunkum’s Heights, was the very node of adventure and romance. The spaceport was divided into three sections, with the depot at the center. To the north was the commercial field, where two or three freight ships were usually loading or discharging. To the south, lined up along an access avenue, were space-yachts belonging to the lords: objects of the most entrancing verve and glitter. To the west was the passenger terminus. Here hulked the black excursion ships, serving those recipients who, by dint of toil and frugality, had been able to buy off-world passage. The tours were various. Cheapest and most popular was a five-day visit to the moon Damar, a strange little world half the diameter of Halma where lived the Damaran puppet-makers. At Garwan, on Damar’s equator, was a tourist node, with hotels, promenades, restaurants. Puppet plays of every description were presented: legends of Faerie, fables of gothic horror, historical reenactments, farces, displays macabre and erotic. The performing puppets were small human simulacra, far more carefully bred, far more
expensive than the wry little creatures exported to such enterprises as Framtree’s Peripatezic Entercationers. The Damarans themselves lived underground, in circumstances of great luxury. Their pelts were black; their bony little heads were tufted with coarse black bristles; their eyes shone with curious glints, like the lights of a star sapphire; in short, they were not unlike their own export puppets.
Another tourist destination, somewhat more prestigious, was the planet next out in orbit: Morgan, a world of wind-swept oceans, table-flat steppes, pinnacles of naked rock. On Morgan were a number of rather shabby resorts, offering little recreation other than sailing high-wheeled cars across the steppes. Nonetheless, thousands paid hard-won vouchers to spend two weeks at Tundra Inn or Mountain House or Cape Rage Haven.
Far more desirable were the Wonder Worlds of the Mirabilis Cluster. When folk returned from the Wonder Worlds they had fulfilled their dreams; they had traveled to the stars; they would talk of the marvels they had seen to the end of their time. The excursion however was beyond the financial reach of all but the highly compensated: guild-masters and delegates, welfare supervisors, Boimarc auditors and bursars, those noncups who had gained wealth through mercantilism, gambling or crime.
Worlds more remote than the Wonder Worlds were known to exist: Rodion, Alcantara, Earth, Maastricht, Montiserra with its floating cities, Himat, many others, but no one fared so far save the lords in their space-yachts.
To Ghyl and Floriel nothing was impossible. Noses pressed to the fence which surrounded the spaceport, they vowed that financial independence and space-travel was the only life for them. But first to gain the vouchers, and here was the stumbling block. Vouchers were hard to come by, Ghyl well knew. Other worlds were reputedly rich, with vouchers distributed without stint. How to take himself and his father and Floriel to a more lavish environment? If only by some marvelous exploit, by some miracle he could come into possession of a space-yacht! What freedom, what romance and adventure!
