by Jack Vance
The crowd stirred; the mutter became an ugly growling sound. More rocks were thrown, more windows broken.
A loudspeaker on the roof suddenly brayed: “Recipients! Return to your work! The Welfare Agency is studying the situation, and in due course will make the proper representations. Everyone! Disperse, depart at once: to your homes or places of work. This is an official instruction.”
The crowd paid no heed; more rocks and bricks were thrown; and suddenly the Agency had become a place in a state of siege.
A group of young men surged up to the locked portal, tried to force it open. Gun-fire sounded; several were laid low. The crowd pushed forward, entered the Agency through the broken windows. There was more gun-fire, but the crowd was within the building and many horrible deeds occurred. The Cobols were torn to bits, the structure put to the torch.
Hysteria continued throughout the night. The eyries remained undamaged mainly because the mob had no feasible mode of attack. On the next day the Guild Council attempted to restore order, with some success, and the Mayor set to work organizing a militia.
Six weeks later a hundred space-craft of every description—passenger packets, cargo vessels, space-yachts—departed Ambroy and crossed to Damar. A few Damaran were killed, a few more captured. The rest took refuge in their residences.
A deputation of the captured Damaran was handed an ultimatum:
For two thousand years you have plundered us without pity or regret. We demand total retribution. Bring forth all of your wealth: every thread of fabric, every precious artifact, all your treasure, in money, credits, foreign accounts and exchange, and all other property of value. These articles and this wealth will thereupon become ours. We will then destroy the residences with explosives. The Damarans must henceforth live on the surface in conditions as bleak as those you inflicted upon us. Thereafter you must pay to the State of Fortinone an indemnity of ten million vouchers each year, for two hundred Halma years.
If you do not immediately agree to these terms you will be destroyed, and not one Damaran will remain alive.
Four hours later the first precious articles began to be conveyed from the residences.
In Undle Square a shrine was erected to shelter a crystal case containing the skeleton of Emphyrio. On the door of a nearby narrow-fronted house with amber glass windows hung a plaque of polished black obsidian. Silver characters read:
In this house lived and worked the son of Amiante Tarvoke, Ghyl, who, taking the name of Emphyrio for his own, did the name, his father and himself great credit.
Also By Jack Vance
The Dying Earth
1. The Dying Earth (1950) (aka Mazirian the Magician)
2. Cugel the Clever (1966) (aka The Eyes of the Overworld)
3. Cugel’s Saga (1966) (aka Cugel: The Skybreak Spatterlight)
4. Rhialto the Marvellous (1984)
Big Planet
1. Big Planet (1952)
2. The Magnificent Showboats (1975) (aka The Magnificent Showboats of the Lower Vissel River, Lune XXII South, Big Planet) (aka Showboat World))
Demon Princes
1. The Star King (1964)
2. The Killing Machine (1964)
3. The Palace of Love (1967)
4. The Face (1979)
5. The Book of Dreams (1981)
Planet of Adventure
1. The Chasch (19648 (City of the Chasch)
2. The Wannek (1969) (Servants of the Wankh)
3. The Dirdir (1969)
4. The Pnume (1970)
Durdane
1. The Anome (1973)
2. The Brave Free Men (1973)
3. The Asutra (1974)
Alastor Cluster
1. Trullion: Alastor 2262 (1973)
2. Marune: Alastor 933 (1975)
3. Wyst: Alastor 1716 (1978)
Lyonesse
1. Suldrun’s Garden (1983) (aka Lyonesse)
2. The Green Pearl (1985)
3. Madouc (1990)
Cadwal Chronicles
1. Araminta Station (1988)
2. Ecce and Old Earth (1991)
3. Throy (1992)
Gaean Reach
1. The Domains of Koryphon (1974) (aka The Gray Prince)
2. Maske: Thaery (1976)
Other Novels
Vandals of the Void (1953)
The Rapparee (The Five Gold Bands/The Space Pirate) (1953)
Clarges (To Live Forever) (1956)
The Languages of Pao (1958)
Gold and Iron (Slaves of the Klau/Planet of the Damned) (1958)
Space Opera (1965)
The Blue World (1966)
Emphyrio (1969)
The Dogtown Tourist Agency (aka Galactic Effectuator) (1980)
Collections
The World-Thinker and Other Stories
The Potter of Firsk and Other Stories (aka Gadget Stories)
Son of the Tree and Other Stories
Golden Girl and Other Stories
The Houses of Iszm and Other Stories
The Dragon Masters and Other
The Moon Moth and Other Stories
Autobiography
This is Me, Jack Vance (2009)
About the Author
Jack Vance (1916 – )
Jack Vance was born in 1916 and studied mining, engineering and journalism at the University of California. During the Second World War he served in the merchant navy and was torpedoed twice.
Author Jack Vance has been central to both science fiction and fantasy since 1945, publishing nearly ninety novels and collections. He has received every major genre award, including the Edgar, Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy and Science Fiction Writers of America Grand Master.
Beginning in the late 1940s, Vance contributed a variety of short stories and novels to the pulp magazines, but nothing of this early work, dependent as it was on pulp conventions, prefigured the mature Vance. The change began with his first published book, The Dying Earth (1950). The novel's convincing articulation of a future Earth in which magic has replaced science was instantly influential, and remains so to the present, continuing to inspire authors and game designers.
Vance's second original contribution to the science fiction and fantasy fields was his sophisticated approach to the "planetary romance," a style of science fiction tale in which the setting is a richly detailed planet, the characteristics of which significantly effect the plot. Vance's work not only expanded this genre's existing archetypes, but established several new ones, significantly inspiring other authors to this day.
As Vance's created worlds became richer and more complex, so too did his style. His writing had always tended toward the baroque, but by the early 1960s it had developed into an effective, high-mannered diction, saturated with a rich but distanced irony. His resulting genius of place, and command as a landscape artist and gardener of worlds has rarely been matched.
Table of Contents
EMPHYRIO
Enter the SF Gateway
Contents
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Also By Jack Vance
About the Author
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