Emphyrio

by Jack Vance

  The people of Earth were another surprise. Ghyl had been ready for weary cynicism, a jaded autumnal lassitude, inversions, eccentricities, subtle sophistications; and in this expectation he was not completely wide of the mark. Certain of the people he met displayed these qualities, but others were as easy and uncomplicated as children. Still others perplexed Ghyl by their fervor, the intensity of their conduct, as if the day were too short for the transaction of all their business. Sitting with Jodel Heurisx at an outdoor café of old Cologne, Ghyl remarked upon the variety of people who walked past their table.

  “True enough,” said Jodel Heurisx. “Other cities on other planets are cosmopolitan enough, but Earth is a universe in itself.”

  “I expected the people to seem old—sedate—wise. Some do, of course. But others—well, look at that man in the green suede. His eyes glitter; he looks right and left as if he were seeing everything for the first time. Of course, he might be an outworlder, like us.”

  “No, he’s an Earthman,” said Jodel Heurisx. “Don’t ask me how I know; I couldn’t tell you. A matter of style: small signs that betray a man’s background. As for his air of restlessness, sociologists declare that material well-being and psychic stability vary in counter-proportion. Barbarians have no time either for idealism or its obverse, psychosis. The people of Earth, however, concern themselves with ‘justification’ and ‘fulfillment’ and a few, such as, perhaps, that man in green, become over-intense. But there are enormous variations. Some devote their energies to visionary schemes. Others turn inward to become sybarites, voluptuaries, connoisseurs, collectors, aesthetes; or they concentrate upon the study of some arcane specialty. To be sure, there are numerous ordinary folk, but somehow they are never noticed, and only serve to heighten the contrast. But then, if you remain on Earth for a period, you will discover much of this for yourself.”

  The Grada’s cargo was sold, and profitably. At Tripoli Ghyl took leave of Jodel and Bonar Heurisx. He promised some day to return to Daillie. Jodel Heurisx told him, “On that day my home will be your home. And never forget that I hold for you your wonderful screen: the ‘Winged Being’.”

  “I won’t forget. For now—goodbye.”

  “Goodbye, Ghyl Tarvoke.”

  Feeling somewhat melancholy, Ghyl watched the Grada lift into the windy blue African sky. But when the ship at last dwindled and disappeared, his spirits rapidly rose: far worse fates than to be on Earth for the first time, with the equivalent of a million vouchers in his pouch! Ghyl thought of his childhood: a time unreal behind a golden haze. How often he and Floriel had lain in the yellow grass on Dunkum’s Heights, talking of travel and financial independence! Both, in separate ways, had achieved their ambition. And Ghyl wondered what region of space Floriel now wandered; whether he were alive or dead…Poor Floriel! thought Ghyl, to be so lost.

  For a month Ghyl roamed Earth, exploring the cloud-towers of America, the equally marvelous submarine cities of the Great Barrier Reef, the vast wilderness parks over which air-cars were not permitted to fly. He visited the restored dawn-cities of Athens, Babylon, Memphis, medieval Bruges, Venice, Regensburg. Everywhere, often light but sometimes so heavy as to be oppressive, lay the weight of history. Each trifling area of soil exhaled a plasm: the recollection of a million tragedies, a million triumphs; of births and deaths; kisses exchanged; blood spilled; the char of fire and energy; songs, glees, incantations, war-chants, frenzies. The soil reeked of events; history lay in strata, in crusts; in eras, continuities, discontinuities. At night ghosts were common, so Ghyl was told: in the precincts of old palaces, in the mountains of the Caucasus, on the heaths and moors of the north.

  Ghyl began to believe that Earth-folk were preoccupied with the past, a theory reinforced by the numerous historical pageants, the survival of anachronistic traditions, the existence of the Historical Institute which recorded, digested, cross-filed and analyzed every shred of fact pertinent to human origin and development…The Historical Institute! Presently he would visit the Institute’s headquarters in London, although—for some reason he did not care to analyze—he was in no great hurry to do so.

  At St. Petersburg he met a slim blonde Norwegian girl named Flora Eilander who occasionally reminded him of Shanne. For a period they traveled together, and she pointed out aspects of Earth he had not before noticed. In particular she scoffed at his theory that Earth folk were preoccupied with the past. “No, no, no!” she told him with a delightful lilting emphasis. “You miss the whole point! We are concerned with the soul of events, the intrinsic essences!”

  Ghyl could not be sure that he had comprehended her exposition, but this was no longer a novelty. He found the people of Earth bewildering. In every conversation he felt a thousand subtleties and indirections, a frame of mind which found as much meaning in the unstated as the stated. There were, he finally decided, niceties of communication which forever would be denied him: allusions through twitches of mannerism, distinctions of a hundredth of a second between a pair of contradictory significances, nameless moods which must instantly be countered or augmented in kind.

  Ghyl became angry with himself and quarreled with Flora, who compounded the situation by condescension. “You must remember that we have known everything, tried every pang and exhilaration. Therefore it is only natural—”

  Ghyl gave a harsh laugh. “Nonsense! Have you ever known grief or fear? Have you ever stolen a space-yacht and killed Garrion? Have you known a County Ball at Grigglesby Corners with the lords and ladies coming forth like magicians in their wonderful costumes? Or stumbled through a rite at Finuka’s Temple? Or looked down dreaming from the Meagher Mounts across old Fortinone?”

  “No, of course; I have done none of these.” And Flora, giving him a long slow inspection, said no more.

  For another month they wandered from place to place: Abyssinia where the sunlight evoked aloes, bitumen, old dust; Sardinia with its olive trees and asphodel; the haze and murk of the Gothic north.

  One day in Dublin Ghyl came upon a placard which froze him in his tracks:

  FRAMTREE’S ORIGINAL PERIPATEZIC ENTERCATIONERS

  The Wonderful Trans-Galactic Extravaganza!

  Hear the blood-curdling screams of the Maupte Bacchanids!

  Goggle at the antics of Holkerwoyd’s puppets!

  Smell the authentic fetors of two dozen far planets!

  Much more! Much more!

  At Casteyn Park, Seven days only

  Flora was uninterested but Ghyl insisted that they instantly take themselves to Casteyn Park, and for once Flora was the one to be perplexed. Ghyl told her nothing other than that he had known the show in his childhood; there was nothing more he could tell her.

  Beside a stand of giant oaks Ghyl found the same gaudy panels, the same placards, the same sounds and outcries he had known as a child. He sought out Holkerwoyd’s Puppet Show and sat through a mildly amusing revue. The puppets squeaked and capered, trilled topical songs, caricatured local personalities, then a group dressed as punchinellos performed a series of farces.

  After the show, leaving the bored but indulgent Flora in her seat, Ghyl approached the curtain at the side of the stage: it might have been the identical curtain that once before he had pushed through, and he fought the impulse to look over his shoulder to where his father must surely be sitting. Slowly he pulled aside the curtain and there, as if he had not moved during all the years, sat Holkerwoyd, mending a bit of stage property.

  Holkerwoyd had aged; his skin was waxen, his lips had drawn back; his teeth seemed yellow and prominent; but his eyes were as keen as ever. Seeing Ghyl he paused in his work, cocked his head. “Yes, sir?”

  “We have met before.”

  “I know this.” Holkerwoyd looked away, rubbed his nose with a gnarled knuckle. “So many folk I’ve seen; so many places I’ve been; a task to set all out in order…Let me see. We met long years ago, on a far planet, in the ditch at the edge of the universe. Halma. It hangs below the green moon Damar, where I buy my p
uppets.”

  “How could you remember? I was a small boy.”

  Holkerwoyd smiled, wagged his head. “You were a serious fellow, puzzled at the way the world went. You were with your father. What of him?”

  “Dead.”

  Holkerwoyd nodded without surprise. “And how goes your life? You are far from Ambroy.”

  “My life goes well enough. But there is a question which troubles me to this day. You performed the legend of Emphyrio. And the puppet was executed.”

  Holkerwoyd shrugged and returned to his mending. “The puppets are not useful forever. They become aware of the world, they begin to feel real. Then they are spoiled and must be destroyed before they infect the troupe.”

  Ghyl grimaced. “Puppets presumably are cheap.”

  “Cheap enough. But just barely. The Damarans are sly dealers, cold as steel. How they love the chink of valuta! To good effect! They live in palaces while I sleep on a cot, starting up at odd noises.” Holkerwoyd became agitated and waved his mending in the air. “Let them lower prices, and lavish less splendor on themselves! They are deaf to all my remonstrances. Would you like to see Emphyrio once more? I have a puppet who is becoming perverse. I have warned and scolded but I continually find him looking across the footlights at the audience.”

  “No,” said Ghyl. He backed toward the curtain. “Well then, for the second time I bid you goodby.”

  Holkerwoyd gave a casual wave. “We may yet meet again, though I suspect not. The years come fast. Some morning they’ll find me lying stark, with the puppets climbing over me, peering in my mouth, tweaking my ears…”

  Back at the Black Swan Hotel, Ghyl and Flora sat in the saloon bar, with Ghyl staring glumly into a glass of wine. Flora made several attempts to speak but Ghyl’s mind had wandered far away, beyond Mirabilis, and he gave back monosyllabic answers. Looking into the wine he saw the narrow-fronted house on Undle Square. He heard Amiante’s quiet voice, the thin scrape of chisels on wood. He felt the wan Ambroy sunlight, the drifting across the mudflats at the mouth of the Insse; he recalled the smells of the docks of Nobile and Foelgher, the gaunt Vashmont towers, the moldering ruins below.

  Ghyl was homesick, even though Ambroy could no longer be considered home. Meditating on Amiante’s humiliation and futile death, Ghyl became so bitter that he turned the whole glass of wine down his throat. The decanter was empty. A waiter in a white apron, sensing Ghyl’s mood, hastened to bring a new decanter.

  Flora rose to her feet, looked down at Ghyl a second or two, then sauntered from the room.

  Ghyl thought of his expulsion, of the looming piston, the crushed bricks, the hour he lay huddled on the wall while the sad twilight gathered around him. Perhaps he had deserved the punishment; undeniably he had stolen a space-yacht. Still, was not the crime justifiable? Did not the lords use Boimarc, or Thurible Co-operative, whatever the case, to swindle and cheat and victimize the recipients? Ghyl brooded and sipped wine, wondering how best to disseminate his knowledge to the recipients. Useless to work either through the guilds or the Welfare Agency; both were conservative to the point of obsession.

  The problem required reflection. Ghyl turned the last of the wine down his throat and went up to his suite. Flora was nowhere in evidence. Ghyl shrugged. He would never see her again: this he knew. Perhaps it was just as well.

  On the following day he crossed the Irish Channel to ancient London. Now, at last, he would visit the Historical Institute.

  But the Historical Institute was not to be approached so easily. Ghyl’s questions to Telescreen Information met first bland evasiveness then a recommendation to a guided tour of Oxford and Cambridge Universities. When Ghyl persisted, he was referred to the Bureau of Weights and Measures, who passed him on to Dundee House. This proved to be the headquarters of some sort of intelligence agency, whose function Ghyl never fully understood. A clerk politely inquired the reason for his interest in the Historical Institute, whereupon Ghyl, controlling his impatience, mentioned the legend of Emphyrio.

  The clerk, a golden-haired young man with crisp mustache, turned away and spoke a few quiet words, apparently to the empty air, then listened, apparently to the air itself. He turned back to Ghyl. “If you will remain at your hotel, an agent of the Institute will shortly make contact with you.”

  Half-amused, half-irritated, Ghyl set himself to wait. An hour later he was met by an ugly little man in a black suit and a gray cloak: Arwin Rolus, sub-director of Mythological Studies at the Institute. “I understand that you are interested in the legend of Emphyrio.”

  “Yes,” said Ghyl. “But first: explain to me the reason for so much stealth and secrecy?”

  Rolus chuckled, and Ghyl saw that he was not really ugly after all. “The situation may seem extravagant. But the Historical Institute, by the very nature of its being, accumulates a great deal of secret intelligence. This is not the Institute’s function, you understand: we are scholars. Still, from time to time we are able to resolve difficulties for more active folk.” He looked Ghyl up and down with an appraising eye. “When an outworlder comes inquiring about the Institute, the authorities ensure that he doesn’t intend to bomb the place.”

  “No danger of that,” said Ghyl. “I want information, no more.”

  “Precisely what information?”

  Ghyl handed him the fragment from Amiante’s portfolio. Without apparent difficulty Rolus read the crabbed old characters. “Well, well, indeed. Interesting. And now you want to find what happened? How the story ended, so to speak?”

  “Yes.”

  “May I ask why?”

  The Earthers were a suspicious lot! thought Ghyl. In a measured voice he stated: “I have known half the legend since my childhood. I promised myself that if I ever were able to learn the rest, I would do so.”

  “And this is the only reason?”

  “Not altogether.”

  Rolus did not pursue the question. “Your home-planet is—” He raised his bushy gray eyebrows.

  “Halma. It is a world back of the Mirabilis Cluster.”

  “Halma. A remote world… Well, perhaps I can gratify your curiosity.” He turned to the wall-screen, tapped with his fingertips to project a coded signal. The screen responded with a run of references, one of which Rolus selected. “Here,” he said, “is the entire chronicle, indited by an unknown writer of the world Aume, or, as some say, Home, about two thousand years ago.”

  The screen displayed a message, printed in Archaic. The first few paragraphs were those of Ghyl’s fragment; then:

  In the Catademnon sat those without ears to hear, who owned no souls and knew neither ease nor fellowship. Emphyrio brought forth his tablet and called for peace. They gave alarms and waved green pennants. Emphyrio urged fellowship; without ears to hear and eyes averted, none would understand, and they waved blue pennants. Emphyrio pled for the kindness which differentiated man from monster, or lacking that, mercy. They broke the tablet of truth underfoot and waved red pennants. Then they lifted Emphyrio in their hands aloft, they held him high to a wall, and through his skull they drove a great nail so that he hung on the wall of the Catademnon. When all had looked to see how fared the man who would have spoken truth, they took him down and under the beam where they nailed him, there in the crypt they immured him forever!

  But what was their profit?

  Who was the victim?

  On the world Aume, or Home, the brutes of Sigil no longer wasted the land. They looked eye to eye and asked: “Is it true, as Emphyrio avers, that we are creatures for whom there is dawn and dusk, pain and pain’s ease? Why then do we waste the land? Let us make our lives good; for we have none other.” And they threw down their arms and retired to those places which were the most pleasant to them, and at once became the easiest of folk, so that all men wondered at their first ferocity.

  Emphyrio died imploring the dark ones to the ways of man, and that they should curb their begotten monsters. They refuted him; they hung him to the wall on a nail. But the mons
ters, at first insensate, were now, through truth, of all folk the easiest. If there be here lesson or moral, it lies beyond the competence of him who inscribes this record.

  Chapter XX

  A sheet printed with the message issued from the wall; Rolus handed it to Ghyl, who read it a second time, then placed it with Amiante’s fragment.

  “The world Aume—is it Halma? Is Sigil the moon Damar?”

  Rolus brought further information to the screen, in a script unfamiliar to Ghyl. “Aume is Halma,” he said. “A world with a complicated history: do you know it?”

  “I suspect not,” said Ghyl. “We learn very little at Ambroy.” He could not keep the bitterness from his voice. “Very little indeed.”

  Without comment Rolus read from the screen, occasionally expanding or interpolating. Two or three thousand years before Emphyrio, and long before men appeared, the Damarans had established colonies on Halma, using space-ships provided by a race of star-wanderers. But war came; the Damarans were expelled and forced back to Damar, where they contrived a means to destroy the star-wanderers. Through the facility of their procreative systems, the Damarans were able to duplicate whatever genetic material might be presented to their glands. They decided to produce an army of irresistible warriors, ruthless and ferocious, who would tear the star-wanderers into shreds. First they prepared a prototype, then built artificial glands to produce the creatures in quantity. When the army was assembled they sent it down from Sigil, or Damar, but isolated in their caves they had lapsed half a thousand years behind the times. The star-wanderers were gone, no one knows where, and men had arrived to take possession of the planet. The army from Damar seemed an act of wanton aggression. The Wirwan—to name the monsters—seemed like fiends from hell. In certain details they were similar to their progenitors. They lacked an accurate sense of hearing, and communicated by means of radio waves. Emphyrio apparently devised a mechanism which translated human words into Wirwan radiation. He was the first man to communicate with the invaders. They were singularly innocent, he discovered, having been trained to one purpose. He made them aware of themselves; he corrupted their innocence, so to speak. Almost magically they became hesitant and retiring, and retreated into the mountains. Encouraged by his success, Emphyrio traveled across the gap to Sigil, hoping to pacify those who had despatched the army.