Emphyrio

by Jack Vance

  “Emphyrio’s ultimate fate is uncertain,” said Rolus. “The account you just read states that the Damarans drove a nail through his head and killed him. Another source declares that Emphyrio negotiated a truce and returned to Aume, where he became the first lord. There are other reports to the effect that the folk of Sigil held Emphyrio a prisoner in perpetuity, preserving him in a state of suspended life. The facts are uncertain. All is changed now. The Damarans produce puppets and manikins in their artificial glands. The Wirwans, a forlorn race, survive on the slopes of Mount Meagher. The men are as you know.”

  Ghyl heaved a sigh. So then: the tale was told. Fortinone, scene of the early campaigns, was now placid. On Damar the puppet-makers catered to the tourists and bred puppets. And Emphyrio? His fate was uncertain. Ghyl recalled his childhood visit to the Meagher Mounts when he had traced imaginary campaigns upon the topography. He had been more accurate than he ever could have dreamed.

  Arwin Rolus was preparing to take his departure. “Is there anything more you wish to know?”

  “Does the Institute collect information from Halma now? From Fortinone?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “You have a correspondent at Ambroy?”

  “Several.”

  “Their identity is secret?”

  “Of course. If they were known, they might be compromised. We are required to stay aloof from events. Not all are able to do this. Your father, for instance.”

  Ghyl turned to stare at Rolus. “My father? Amiante Tarvoke? Was he a correspondent?”

  “Yes. For many years.”

  Ghyl took himself to a cosmetic surgeon. His nose was narrowed, bridged and peaked; his eyebrows set in a new slant. The tattoo on his shoulder was expunged; the prints of his tongue, fingers, palms and soles were altered. His skin was toned dull olive-bronze, his hair was dyed black and finally only the contents of his brain remained to identify him as Ghyl Tarvoke.

  At Ball and Sons, Haberdashers, Ghyl fitted himself out with Earth-style garments and was astounded by the hologram. Who would associate this debonair young gallant with poor harried Ghyl Tarvoke of old?

  Fictitious identification papers were hard to come by. Finally Ghyl called Dundee House and presently was connected with Arwin Rolus.

  Rolus recognized Ghyl at once which caused Ghyl exasperation and uneasiness. Ghyl stated his requirements but Rolus was reluctant to offer assistance. “Please understand the Institute’s position. We profess didactic dispassion and nonpartisanship in all circumstances. We record, analyze, interpret—but we do not interfere or promulgate. If I, as an officer of the Historical Institute, were to assist your intrigue, I would be intruding the Institute upon a flow of history.”

  Ghyl thought that Rolus had unnecessarily emphasized one of his phrases. Ghyl said quickly, “I did not mean this to be an official call. I thought only to turn to you, as my single acquaintance on Earth, for some quiet advice.”

  “I see,” said Rolus. “Well, in that case—” He thought a moment. “Of course I know nothing of these matters. But—” a slip of paper issued from the wall-slot in Ghyl’s room “—if you call this code, someone at least will listen to you without wincing.”

  “I also have a question for you in your official capacity.”

  “Well then. What is the question?”

  “Where is the Catademnon, where on Damar?”

  Rolus gave a brisk nod, as if Ghyl’s question came as no surprise. “I will put the question into process; the information will reach you shortly and the service charge will be added to your hotel addition.”

  Ten minutes later a sheet of paper issued from the wall-slot. The message read:

  The Catademnon, hall of the war lords of ancient Sigil, now known as Damar, is a ruin in the mountains ten miles southwest of the present Old City.

  During the evening Ghyl made contact with the man whose code Arwin Rolus had supplied. The next day he picked up his new documents, and assumed the identity of Sir Hartwig Thorn, Grandee. He immediately booked passage for Damar, and the same evening departed Earth.

  Chapter XXI

  Damar was an eery little world, half the diameter of Halma, but with one-sixth Halma’s mass and two-thirds its surface gravity. There were great expanses of bog across the polar regions, mountains and crags of astonishing dimension in the middle latitudes, an arid zone where grew Damar’s unique equatorial thicket: a tangle of barbs and tendrils ten miles wide and occasionally a half-mile high. What with bogs, crags, gorges and the thicket, there were few areas convenient for habitation. Garwan, the tourist center, and Damar Old City were at opposite ends of the Great Central Plain, this apparently a scar inflicted by the glancing blow of a meteor.

  At Garwan were hotels, restaurants, baths, sporting areas; luxury in bizarre surroundings. Puppet theaters provided spectacle and diversion: farce, historical pageants, macabre drama, erotic display. The puppet performers were a special breed: handsome little creatures four or five feet tall, vastly different from the half-simian imps supplied to such as Holkerwoyd.

  The Damarans themselves seldom ventured from their residences under the hills, upon which they spent prodigious fortunes. The typical residence was a complex system of chambers swathed in soft fabrics, illuminated with meticulous nicety. Silver light shone on gray and nacreous curtains; red, carmine and magenta were used against blues and pale pink. Globes giving off deep purple or plangent sea-green hung behind films and layers of gauze. The residences were never complete, always in the process of alteration and extension. On rare occasions a man whom the Damaran wished to please, or one who paid a sufficiently large fee, might be invited into a residence: a visit preceded by an extraordinary ritual. Twittering puppets bathed the visitor, sprayed him with mist, muffled him head to foot in a white robe, fitted him with sandals of white felt. Thus sanitized, deodorized and padded, he would be conducted along interminable vistas of hangings and draperies, into grottoes hung with waving webs and gauzes, through blue lights and gray-green lights, finally to emerge awed and bewildered, if by nothing else but the vast expenditures of wealth. The average excursionist, however, saw the Damarans only as silent shapes to the back of an office or shop.

  Arriving at Garwan, Ghyl established himself at one of the ‘Old Damar’ hotels: a pyramidal heap of white domes and hemispheres, with a few small windows placed seemingly at random. Ghyl was lodged in two domed rooms on different levels, draped with panels of pale green, and floors cushioned by a heavy black carpet.

  Leaving the hotel, Ghyl entered a tour and travel agency. On a shadowed balcony stood a Damaran, eye-bulbs each glinting with a luminous star: a creature smaller, softer, more flexible than a Garrion, but otherwise much the same. On the counter a screen responding to a radio-frequency projection showed luminous characters: “You wish?”

  “I want to hire an air-car.” The words became tremulous shapes on the screen, which the Damaran read at a glance.

  The response came: “This is possible, though expensive. A tour by sight-seeing tube costs no more and is preferable, in safety and deluxe comfort.”

  “No doubt,” said Ghyl. “But I am a scholar at a university of Earth. I wish to look for fossils. I want to visit the puppet factories and look through the old ruins.”

  “It is possible. There is a depletion fee upon the export of fossils. It is not advisable to visit the puppet factories, due to the delicacy of procedures. A visitor would not be amused. There are no ruins of interest. The sight-seeing tube will offer greater value, and will cost less.”

  “I prefer to hire an air-car.”

  “You must post a bond for the value of the car. When do you want it?”

  “Early tomorrow morning.”

  “Your name?”

  “Hartwig Thorn.”

  “Tomorrow morning the car will be at the back of the hotel. You may now pay three thousand one hundred standard valuta units. Three thousand is the deposit. It will be returned to you. The air-car charge is one hundred units
a day.”

  Ghyl walked about the city for an hour or two. With the coming of evening, he seated himself in an open-air café, to drink ale imported from Fortinone. Halma swam up into the sky, an enormous amber half-disk, vaguely marked with familiar outlines.

  A man walked into the café, followed by a woman; each in turn was silhouetted against Halma. Ghyl altered the focus of his vision, watched the couple settle themselves at a nearby table. The man was Schute Cobol; the woman no doubt was his wife; they had come to Damar to spend their hoarded vouchers like any other recipients. Schute Cobol glanced at Ghyl, studied his Earth-style garments, muttered something to his wife, who likewise inspected Ghyl. Then they gave their attention to the menu. Ghyl, with a wry grin, looked up through the air toward Halma.

  Chapter XXII

  The days and nights of Damar were short. After dining and musing long into the night over a map of Damar, Ghyl had hardly retired to his suite before the sky began to lighten.

  He arose with a sense of fatefulness. Long ago Holkerwoyd had pronounced him ‘fey’: laboring under a burden of doom. He dressed slowly, aware of the weight. It seemed that his whole life had been directed toward this day.

  The air-car was waiting on a stage behind the hotel. Ghyl examined the controls, decided that they were standard. He climbed in, latched the dome, hitched the control wheel up to a convenient position and locked it. He checked the energy level: the cells were charged; he touched the ON button, pulled up on the wheel. The car lifted into the air. Ghyl slid the wheel forward, tilted it back: the car slid up at a slant.

  So far so good. Ghyl sent the car higher, up over the mountains. Far to the south was the equatorial thicket, a formless gray-brown smudge. Ghyl steered to the north.

  The miles slipped past; the thin upper air hissed past the dome. Ahead glinted a single rime-crusted peak: a landmark. Ghyl steered to the north of the peak and saw ahead Damar Old City: an unlovely jumble of long sheds and warehouses. Instinctively preferring that his presence not be noted Ghyl dropped the air-car low, to within a hundred feet of the surface, and veered to the southeast of Old City.

  He searched an hour before he found the ruins: a tumble of stone lost among the rocky debris of the mountainside.

  He landed the air-car on a little flat of drifted gravel fifty yards from a low wall, and now Ghyl wondered how he had searched so long, for the structure was of monumental scope and walls were yet standing. He alighted and stood by the car, listening, to hear only the sigh of wind across the harsh surface of the scree. The Old City, ten miles distant, was a formless jumble of grey and white tablets. He could see no moving object, no sign of life.

  He took his lamp and hand-gun, approached the broken wall, which was half-drifted over with soil. Beyond was a depression, then a heavier wall of lichen-stained concrete: cracked, sagging, but still upright. Ghyl moved closer, trying to control his awe. This was a hall of giants; Ghyl felt dwarfed and trivial. Still—Emphyrio had been a man like himself, with a man’s courage and a man’s fear. He had come to the Catademnon—and then?

  Ghyl crossed the fosse between the two walks and came to a portal, choked with rubble. He scrambled up and peered within, but the sunlight, slanting across the sky, avoided the gap and he saw only black shadows.

  Ghyl switched on his lamp, slid down over the debris, into a dank corridor cluttered with the drift of centuries. On the wall hung tatters of fabric spun, perhaps, from fibers of melted obsidian, stained with metal oxides. The patterns were crusted with grime, but nonetheless heroic. They reminded Ghyl of hangings he had seen elsewhere, in circumstances he could not recall…The corridor opened into an oval hall, the roof of which had collapsed. The floor was open to the sky.

  Ghyl halted. He stood in the Catademnon. Here Emphyrio had confronted the tyrants of Sigil. There was no sound, not even the rasp of the wind, but the pressure of the past was almost tangible.

  At the far end of the hall was a gap with tatters of ancient regalia to either side. Here might Emphyrio have been lifted and nailed to a beam—if this had indeed been his fate.

  Ghyl crossed the floor. He halted, looked up at the stone beam over the gap. There was certainly a scar, an eroded hole, a socket. If Emphyrio had been suspended here, his feet would have dangled to the level of Ghyl’s shoulders, his blood would have stained the stone by Ghyl’s feet…The stone was crusted with a gray efflorescence.

  Ghyl walked under the beam, turned his flash down into the opening. Dust, debris, bits of dry vegetation clogged the first part of a wide set of stairs. Ghyl clambered through, flashing the light to all sides. “Under the beam where they had nailed him, there in their crypt did they immure him forever.” The steps gave upon an oval chamber, with three passages leading off into the darkness. The chamber was floored with a dull stone on which lay an undisturbed layer of dust. The crypt? Ghyl turned the light around the chamber, and walked in the direction where the crypt must lie. He looked into a long room, cold and still. On the floor, helter-skelter, were half a dozen cases molded of glass, coated heavily with dust. Each contained organic remains: chitinous plates; strips of withered black leather…In one of the cases was a human skeleton, the joints wasted apart, the bones collapsed. The vacant eyeholes looked up at Ghyl. In the center of the forehead was a round hole.

  Ghyl took the air-car back to Garwan, set it down on the pad behind the hotel, collected his deposit. Then he went to his suite where he bathed and changed into fresh garments. He went to sit on the terrace overlooking the plaza. He felt flat, deflated. He had not expected to find what he had found. The skeleton had been anticlimactical.

  He had hoped for more. What of the sense of portent with which he had started the day? His instinct had played him false. Everything had gone with footling ease, with such small difficulty and so little incident that the whole affair seemed shameful. Ghyl felt uneasy, dissatisfied. He had found the remains of Emphyrio: as to this there was no doubt. But drama? There was none. He knew no more than before. Emphyrio had died uselessly, his glorious life ending in failure and futility. But there was no surprise: so much had been set forth in the legend.

  The sun fell behind the western hills. Garwan’s shape—receding domes, superimposed one on the other, pile on pile—was black against the ash-brown sky. From an alley beside the hotel came a dark figure: a Damaran. It sidled along the jetta hedge that bordered the terrace, halted to look across the plaza. Then it turned to examine the terrace, as if calculating the worth of the night’s business. Avaricious, hyper-luxurious beasts, thought Ghyl, with every sequin, every voucher, every bice poured into their already extravagant residences. He wondered if in the old heroic days, during the time of Emphyrio, the Damarans had been equally sybaritic…The Catademnon had suggested no great refinement. Perhaps in those days they had lacked the financial means to gratify their tastes… Sensing Ghyl’s attention, the Damaran turned its queer tufted head, stared for several seconds, the yellow-green star in the dull eyes expanding and contracting. Ghyl stared back, exploring a sudden startling speculation.

  The Damaran abruptly turned, disappeared behind the hedge. Ghyl leaned back in his seat. He sat for a long while in a half-mesmerized state of detachment, while excursionists came, dined, departed. And the twilight faded to a luminous umber and disappeared.

  The situation had a queer ambivalence. Ghyl swung between nervous amusement for his own whimsies and a dreadful bleakness of spirit.

  As an exercise in abstract logic the problem resolved into a starkly simple solution.

  When the arguments were transposed into human terms, the force of the logic remained, but the solution implied such heart-breaking tragedy that it transcended belief.

  Still: facts were facts. So many curious little trifles which he had observed with wonder now became firm segments of an intricate whole. Ghyl gave a giddy wild laugh which drew glances of censure from a nearby group of Ambroy excursionists. Ghyl choked back his mirth. They would consider him a maniac. If he went to their table, told
them his thoughts, how he would shock them! Their trip, for which they had saved all their lives, would be ruined. Would they welcome such knowledge?

  Here was a new predicament: What should he do, what steps should he take?

  There was no one to give him counsel; he was alone.

  What, given the circumstances, would have been Emphyrio’s course of action?

  Truth.

  Very well, thought Ghyl: it shall be Truth, and let the consequences fall where they may.

  Another incidental thought occurred to him, nearly occasioning another outburst of lunatic mirth. What of his premonitions of destiny now? They had been fulfilled, ten times over.

  Ghyl signaled for a menu and ordered his dinner. In the morning he would depart for Ambroy.

  Chapter XXIII

  Ghyl arrived at the familiar old Godero space-port late in the afternoon, Ambroy time. He waited until the excursionists had pushed off the ship, then strolled down the ramp in a manner of languid condescension, hoping to camouflage his inner trepidation.

  The control official was a man of bitter disposition. He scowled at Ghyl’s Earth-style garments, studied his documents with discouraging skepticism. “Earth, is it? What do you do here in Ambroy?”

  “I travel.”

  “Hmf. Sir Hartwig Thorn. A grandee. We have them here as well. It’s all the same. The grandees do the traveling; the underlings work. Duration of stay?”