Emphyrio

by Jack Vance

  The air-car bumped to a landing beside a concrete wall which marked the Bauredel frontier. A brick road between two subsidiary walls led up to an aperture in the boundary wall. A two-inch stripe of white paint marked the exact Fortinone-Bauredel boundary. Immediately behind the stripe the aperture was stopped by a plug of concrete stained and spotted a horrid dull brown.

  Ghyl was seized and turned out upon the brick road, between the walls which led to the frontier. A Welfare Special clapped on the traditional broad-brimmed black hat and in a portentous voice read the banishment decree: “Depart from our cherished land, oh evil man who have been proved guilty of great harm! Glorious Finuka has proscribed killing throughout the cosmic realm; thank Finuka then for the mercy to be bestowed upon you, more than you showed your own victim! You are then to be banished perpetually, and for all time, from the territory of Fortinone, and into the land of Bauredel. Do you care to leap a final rite?”

  “No,” said Ghyl in a husky voice.

  “Go then as best you may, go with Finuka’s aid into the land of Bauredel!”

  A great concrete piston, entirely filling the alley, moved forward, thrusting Ghyl toward that single inch of Bauredel territory available for his occupancy.

  Ghyl backed up against the piston, planted his feet against the crumbling brick. The piston thrust forward. Sixty feet to the border. A film of sunlight, pale as lymph, slanted into the avenue, outlining uneven edges of the brick, framing the concrete plug of the portal with a black shadow.

  Ghyl stared at the bricks. He ran forward, tugged at a brick, then another, then another, until his fingernails broke and his fingertips were bloody. By the time he found a loose brick, the piston had denied him all but forty feet of avenue. But after the first brick came up, others pulled up without difficulty. He rushed to carry the bricks to the wall, stacked them into a pile, ran back for more.

  Bricks, bricks, bricks: Ghyl’s head pounded; he gasped and wheezed. Thirty feet of avenue, twenty feet, ten feet. Ghyl scrambled up the pile of bricks; they collapsed below him; frantically he stacked them again, with the piston looming over his shoulder. Up once more, and as the pile gave way he scrambled to the top of the wall. The piston thrust upon the bricks. A crunch, a crush: the bricks compressed into a friable red cake.

  Ghyl lay flat on top of the wall, concealed by the walls of the avenue and by the piston, ready to drop over into Bauredel territory should the welfare agents see fit to investigate.

  Ghyl lay flat as a limpet. The sun fell behind clouds; sunset was a somber display of dark yellow, watery browns. A cold breeze blew in across the waste.

  Ghyl could hear no sound. The machinery of the piston was silent. The Welfare Specials had departed. Ghyl rose cautiously to his knees, peered in all directions. Bauredel to the north was dark: a waste swept by a sighing wind. To the south a few far lights glimmered.

  Ghyl rose to his feet, stood swaying. The air-car had departed; the shack which housed the piston machinery was dark, but Ghyl was only half-convinced that he was alone. The area was pervaded with terror. The thin wailing of the wretches expelled in the past still seemed to hang in the air.

  Ghyl looked south toward Ambroy, forty miles distant, where the Grada represented security.

  Security? Ghyl gave a hoarse laugh. He wanted more than security. He wanted vengeance: retribution for years upon years of fraud, dreary malice, the sadness of wasted lives. He dropped to the ground and started south across the barrens, toward the lights of the village. His legs, at first limp, regained their strength.

  He came to a fenced pasture, where biloa stalked sedately back and forth. In the dark, when aroused, biloa had been known to attack men. Ghyl veered around the pasture and presently came to an unpaved road, which he followed to the village.

  He halted at the edge of town. The white smock rendered him conspicuous: if seen he would be recognized for what he was, and the local welfare agent would be summoned… Ghyl moved stealthily through the shadows, down a side lane and to the rear of the town’s beer garden, where he conducted a careful reconnaissance. Dropping to his hands and knees he crawled around the periphery to where a portly gentleman had draped his beige and black cloak over the railing. While the gentleman engaged the bar-maid in conversation, Ghyl took possession of the cloak, and retreating under the trees threw it over his shoulders and drew the hood over his head, to hide his Daillie hair-cut. Across the square he noted an Overtrend station with a concrete rail receding to the south.

  Hoping that the portly gentleman would not immediately notice the loss of his cloak, Ghyl walked briskly to the station.

  Three minutes later a car arrived; with a last look over his shoulder toward the beer garden Ghyl stepped aboard and was whisked south. Mile after mile after mile: into Walz and Batra, then Elsen and Godero. The car halted; Ghyl stepped out upon the slideway, was carried to the escalator, raised and discharged into the space terminal. He swung back the hood of the stolen cloak, advanced with a forthright tread to the north gate. The control officer stepped forward. “Identification, sir?”

  “I have lost it,” said Ghyl, striving for a Daillie accent. “I am from the Grada—that ship yonder.” He leaned over the book. “Here is my signature: Tal Gans. This official here—” Ghyl indicated a clerk, who stood nearby “—passed me through the gates.”

  The guard turned to the clerk indicated. “Correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “Please be more careful with your papers, sir. They might be misused by some unscrupulous person.”

  Ghyl gave a lofty nod, and strode out upon the field. Five minutes later he was aboard the Grada.

  Bonar Heurisx regarded him with astonishment. “I have been intensely concerned! I thought never to see you again!”

  “I have had a fearful day. Only by chance am I alive.” He told Heurisx of his adventures; and Heurisx, looking at him, marveled at the changes done in a single day. Ghyl’s cheeks were hollow, his eyes burned; he had put the trust and hope of his youth forever behind him.

  “Well then,” said Bonar Heurisx, “so much for our plans, which were chancy at best.”

  “Not so fast,” said Ghyl. “We came here to trade; trade we will.”

  “Surely you’re not serious?” demanded Heurisx.

  “Something may still be possible,” said Ghyl. He went to his locker, threw off the white smock, donned dark Daillie trousers, a tight dark shirt.

  Bonar Heurisx watched in puzzlement. “We’re not going forth again tonight?”

  “I, not you. I hope to make some sort of arrangement.”

  “But why not wait till tomorrow?” complained Bonar Heurisx.

  “Tomorrow will be too late,” said Ghyl. “Tomorrow I’ll be calm, I’ll be reasonable, I won’t be desperate with anger.”

  Bonar Heurisx made no response. Ghyl finished his preparations. Because of the officials at the control gate, he dared not carry the articles he might have wished, and so contented himself with a roll of adhesive tape, a dark beret over his shaved head. “I’ll be gone possibly two hours. If I do not return by morning, you had best depart.”

  “All very well, but what do you plan?”

  “Trade. Of one sort or another.”

  Ghyl departed the ship. He returned to the control gate, submitted to a lackadaisical search for contraband, and was issued a new landing permit. “Be more careful of this than the last, if you please. And mind the tavern girls. They’ll importune, and you’ll wake in the morning with a sour taste and never a coin in your pocket.”

  “I’ll take care.”

  Ghyl once more rode Overtrend to East Town: by night the most forlorn and dismal of regions. Once again he approached the thirty-acre compound surrounding the Associated Guilds warehouse and the Boimarc offices. Furtive as an animal, he approached the fence. The warehouse was dark save for a light in the guards’ office. The Boimarc offices showed a set of illuminated windows. A pair of floodlights, to either side, shone across the compound, where during the
day lift-trucks worked loading and unloading air-vans and drays.

  Standing in the shadow of a broken signal stanchion, Ghyl examined the entire vicinity. The night was dark and damp. To the east were gutted ruins of ancient row-houses. Far south the Vashmont eyries showed a few high yellow lights; much closer he saw the red and green glimmer of a local tavern. In the compound, mist blowing in from the ocean swirled around the floodlights.

  Ghyl approached the gate which was closed and barred, and undoubtedly equipped with sensor alarms. It offered no hope of access. He started around the periphery of the compound and presently came to a spot where wet earth had collapsed into a ditch, leaving a narrow gap. Ghyl dropped to his knees, enlarged the gap and presently was able to roll under the fence.

  Crouching, sliding through the dark, he approached the Boimarc offices from the north, peered through a window, into the empty rooms. There was ample illumination, but no sound, no sense of occupancy.

  Ghyl looked right and left, backed away, circled the building, cautiously testing doors and windows, but as he expected all were locked. At the east end a small annex was under construction. Ghyl clambered up the new masonry to a setback in the main structure and thence to the roof. He listened. No sound.

  Ghyl stole across the roof and presently found an insecure ventilator which he detached and so was able to drop down into an upper storage chamber.

  Quietly he made his way to the ground floor, his senses sharp and questing, and at last peered into the main offices. Light exuded calmly, evenly from glow-panels. He heard the ticking of an automatic instrument. The room, as before, was empty.

  Ghyl made a quick investigation, taking note of the various doors, should he need to make a hurried exit. Then more confidently he turned back toward Lord Dugald’s alcove. He peered behind the desk; there in its socket, hung the stamp. On the desk were new requisitions, as yet unvalidated. Ghyl took three of these, and going to the inventory mechanism, set himself to puzzle out the form and coding and the method by which the requisitions were printed. Then he studied the read-outs on the automatic inventory calculator.

  Time passed. Ghyl essayed a few sale requisitions; then referring constantly to the sample forms and the operator’s schedule, he prepared a requisition. He checked it with care. So far as he could see—perfect.

  He removed the evidences of his work and replaced the sample requisitions. Then, taking Lord Dugald’s stamp from its socket, he validated the requisition.

  And now: what to do with the requisition? Ghyl studied a notice taped to the console of the computer: a schedule of lead times and deadlines, and verified his supposition: the requisition must be conveyed to the despatcher in the warehouse.

  Ghyl departed the offices the way he had come, not daring to use the doors for fear of exciting an alarm.

  Standing in the shadows he looked across at the warehouse, which was dark except for lights in the watchman’s cabin.

  Ghyl approached the warehouse from the rear, climbed up a ramp to the loading dock, went in a stealthy half-run to a corner of the building. He peered around and saw nearby the booth in which sat two guards. One knit a garment, the other rocked back and forth with his feet on a shelf.

  Ghyl backed away, walked along the dock, testing doors. All were securely locked. Ghyl heaved a sad sigh. He found a length of half-rotten wood, took up a position and waited. Fifteen minutes passed. The guard who knitted glanced at a timepiece, arose, flicked on a lantern, spoke a word to his comrade. Then he went forth to make his rounds. He came past Ghyl whistling tunelessly between his teeth. Ghyl shrank back in the shadows. The watchman stopped by a door, fumbled with his keys, inserted one in the lock.

  Ghyl crept up behind, struck down with the length of wood. The guard dropped in his tracks. Ghyl took his weapon, his lantern, bound and gagged the man with adhesive tape.

  With a final glance to right and left he eased open the door, entered the dark warehouse. He flashed the light here and there: up and down bales of merchandise, crates and boxes, in bays marked Acme, First, Second. The despatcher’s office was immediately to the left. Ghyl entered, turned his light along the counters, the desks. Somewhere he should see a sheaf of stiff yellow sheets…There, in a cubicle to the side. Ghyl stepped forward, inspected the requisitions. The top sheet was the earliest, carrying the lowest number. Ghyl removed this sheet, wrote its number on his own requisition, added it to the pile.

  He ran back to the door. The watchman lay groaning, still unconscious. Ghyl dragged him into the warehouse, near a pile of crates. He lifted two crates to the floor, beside the watchman’s head, disarranged the remaining crates. He replaced the lantern, the weapon, the keys, on the watchman’s person, removed the adhesive bonds, and departed hastily.

  Three-quarters of an hour later Ghyl was back and aboard the Grada, to find Bonar Heurisx taut with anxiety. “You’ve been gone so long! What have you accomplished?”

  “A great deal! Almost everything! Or so I hope. We’ll know in the morning.” In exultation Ghyl explained the circumstances. “—and all ‘Acmes’ and ‘Acme Reserve’! I ordered out the choicest goods in the warehouse! The best of the best! Oh what a trick to play on Lord Dugald!”

  Heurisx heard him aghast. “The risk! Suppose the substitution is detected?”

  Ghyl gave a reckless fling of the arms. “Unthinkable! But still—we want to be ready to leave, and leave at once. I agree as to that.”

  “Never have I stolen a copper!” cried Bonar Heurisx in distress. “I will not steal now!”

  “We do not steal! We take—and pay!”

  “But when? And to whom?”

  “In due course. To whomever will accept the money.”

  Bonar sunk into a chair, rubbed his forehead wearily. “Something will go wrong. You will see. Impossible to steal—”

  “Excuse me: to ‘trade’.”

  “—to steal, trade, swindle, whatever you care to call it, with such facility.”

  “We shall see! If all goes well, the drays will arrive soon after sunrise.”

  “And if all goes ill?”

  “As I said before—be ready to leave!”

  The night passed; dawn came at last. On tenterhooks Ghyl and Bonar Heurisx waited, either for loaded drays or the black five-wheeled cars of the Special Agents.

  An hour after dawn a port official mounted the loading ladder. “Ahoy, aboard the Grada.”

  “Yes, yes?” called Bonar Heurisx. “What is it?”

  “Are you expecting cargo?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Well, then, open your hatches, prepare to stow. We like to do things efficiently here at Ambroy.”

  “Just as you say.”

  Ten minutes later the first of the drays pulled up beside the Grada.

  “You must rate highly,” said the driver. “All ‘Acmes’ and ‘Acme Reserves’.”

  Bonar Heurisx made only a non-committal sound.

  Six drays in all rolled up to the Grada. The driver of the sixth dray said, “You’re cleaning us out of Acmes. I’ve never seen such a cargo. Everyone at the warehouse is wondering about it.”

  “Just another cargo,” said Ghyl. “We’re full to our chocks; don’t bring any more.”

  “Precious little more to bring,” grumbled the driver. “Well then, sign the receipt.”

  Ghyl took the invoice and prompted by a sudden whimsey scrawled ‘Emphyrio’ across the paper.

  Bonar Heurisx called to the crew: “Close the hatches, we’re taking off!”

  “Only just soon enough,” said Ghyl. He pointed. “There come the Special Agents.”

  Up into the air lifted the Grada; on the field below a dozen Special Agents jumped from their black cars to stand looking after them.

  Ambroy dwindled below; Halma became a sphere. Damar, lowering and purple-brown, fell back to the side. The propulsors whined more hoarsely, the Grada went into space-drive.

  Jodel Heurisx was stupefied by the quality and quantity of the cargo. “This
is not merchandise; this is treasure!”

  “It represents the hoard of centuries,” said Ghyl. “All goods of ‘Acme’ grade. Notice this screen, the Winged Being—the last screen my father carved. I polished and waxed it after his death.”

  “Put it aside,” said Jodel Heurisx. “Keep it for your own.”

  Ghyl shook his head glumly. “Sell it with the rest. It brings me melancholy thoughts.”

  But Jodel Heurisx would not allow Ghyl his sentimentality. “Some day you will have a son. Would not the screen be a fine present to make to him?”

  “If such an unlikely event ever comes to pass.”

  “The screen then is yours, and it will be kept in my home until you need it.”

  “Oh, very well. Who knows what the future holds?”

  “The rest of the cargo we will convey to Earth. Why trifle with provincial markets? On Earth are the great fortunes, the ancient palaces; we will attract the money of connoisseurs. A sum shall be reserved for the Ambroy guilds. We shall deduct the expenses of the voyage. The remainder will be divided into three parts. There will be wealth for all of us. You shall be financially independent, Ghyl Tarvoke!”

  Chapter XIX

  All his life Ghyl had heard speculation as to the provenance of man. Some declared Earth to be the source of the human migration; another group inclined toward Triptolemus; others pointed to Amenaro, the lone planet of Deneb Kaitos; a few argued spontaneous generation from a universal float of spores.

  Jodel Heurisx resolved Ghyl’s uncertainty. “You may be sure: Earth is the human source! All of us are Earthmen, no matter where we were born!”

  In many ways the reality of Earth was at odds with Ghyl’s preconceptions. He had thought to find a dismal world, the horizon spiked with rotting ruins, the sun a flaming red eye, the seas oily and stagnant from the seepage of ages.

  But the sun was warm and yellow-white, much like the sun of Maastricht; and the sea seemed considerably more fresh than Deep Ocean to the west of Fortinone.