by Jack Vance
They were alike as mannequins from the factory: slender and straight, with skins as pale and thin as paper, arched coal-black eyebrows, and regular, if somewhat peaked, features. They wore the usual black cloaks and black hats, which accentuated the quaint and eerie non-earthliness of the earthly bodies. They might have been five versions of the same person, although Reith, even as the idea crossed his mind, knew that each made sure distinctions, too subtle for his knowing, between herself and the others; each felt her personal existence to be the central movement of the cosmos.
The serving area was empty. Reith stepped forth and on long quick strides crossed to the stairs. Only just in time: from the kitchen came one of the cooks, to go to the storage room. Had Reith delayed another moment he would have been discovered. Heart beating fast, he started up the stairs ... He stopped short and stood holding his breath. From above came a soft sound: the pad-pad-pad of footsteps. Reith froze in his tracks. The sounds became louder.
Down the stairs came the mottled red and black feet of a Pnume, then the flutter of black cloth. Reith hurriedly retreated, to stand indecisively at the foot of the stairs. Where to go? He looked about frantically. In the storage room the cook ladled pilgrim-pod from a sack. The children occupied the exercise-chamber.
Reith had a single choice. He hunched his shoulders and stalked softly into the refectory. At a middle table sat a Pnumekin girl, she whose supper he had commandeered. Reith took what he considered the most inconspicuous seat and sat sweating. His disguise was makeshift; a single direct glance would reveal his identity.
Silent minutes passed. The Pnumekin girl lingered over the packet of wafers which she seemed especially to enjoy. At last she rose to her feet and started to leave the chamber. Reith lowered his head: too sharply, too abruptly-a discordant movement. The girl turned a startled glance in his direction and even now habit was strong; she looked past him without directly focusing her eyes.
But she saw, she knew. For an instant she remained frozen, her face loose and incredulous; then she uttered a soft cry of terror, and started to run from the room. Reith was instantly upon her, to stifle her with his hand and thrust her against the wall.
"Be quiet!" Reith muttered. "Don't make any noise! Do you understand?"
She stared at him in a kind of horrified daze. Reith gave her a shake. "Don't make a sound! Do you understand? Nod your head!"
She managed to jerk her head. Reith took away his hand. "Listen!" he whispered.
"Listen carefully! I am a man of the surface. I was kidnapped and brought down here. I escaped, and now I want to return to the surface. Do you hear me?" She made no response. "Do you understand? Answer!" He gave the thin shoulders another shake.
"Yes."
"Do you know how to reach the surface?"
She shifted her gaze, to stare at the floor. Reith darted a glance toward the serving area; if one of the cooks should happen to look into the refectory, all was lost. And the Pnume who had descended the stairs, what of him? And the balcony! Reith had forgotten the balcony! With a sick thrill of fear he searched the high shadows. No one stood watching. But they could remain here no longer, not another minute. He grasped the girl by the arm. "Come along. Not a sound, remember! Or I'll have to hurt you!"
He pulled her along the wall to the entrance. The serving area was empty. From the kitchen came a grinding sound and a clatter of metal. Of the Pnume there was no sign.
"Up the stairs," whispered Reith.
She made a sound of protest; Reith clapped his hand over her mouth and dragged her to the staircase. "Up! Do as I say and you won't be harmed!"
She spoke in a soft even voice: "Go away."
"I want to go away," Reith declared in a passionate mutter. "I don't know where to go!"
"I can't help you."
"You've got to help me. Up the stairs. Quick now!"
Suddenly she turned and ran up the stairs, so light on her feet that she seemed to float. Reith was taken by surprise. He sprang after her, but she outdistanced him and sped down one of the corridors. In desperation she fled; in equal desperation Reith pursued, and after fifty feet caught her. He thrust her against the wall, where she stood panting. Reith looked up and down the corridor: no one was in sight, to his vast relief. "Do you want to die?" he hissed in her ear.
"No!"
"Then do exactly what I tell you!" growled Reith. He hoped that the threat convinced her; and indeed her face sagged; her eyes became wide and dark. She tried to speak, and finally asked: "What do you want me to do?"
"First, lead the way to a quiet place, where no one comes."
With sagging shoulders she turned away, and proceeded along the corridor. Reith asked suspiciously, "Where are you taking me?"
"To the punishment place."
A moment later she turned into a side corridor which almost at once ended in a round chamber. The girl went to a pair of black flint cabochons; looking over her shoulder like a fairy-tale witch, she pushed the black bulbs. A portal opened upon black space; the girl stepped through with Reith close behind. She touched a switch; from a light-panel came a wan illumination.
They stood on a ledge at the edge of a brink. A crazy insect-leg derrick tilted over profound darkness; from the end hung a rope.
Reith looked at the girl; she looked silently back at him with a kind of half-frightened, half-sullen indifference. Holding to the derrick, Reith looked gingerly over the brink. A cold draft blew up into his face, and he turned away.
The girl stood motionless. Reith suspected that the sudden convulsion of events had put her into a state of shock. The tight hat constricted his head; he pulled it off. The girl shrank back against the wall. "Why do you take off the hat?"
"It hurts my head," said Reith.
The girl flicked her glance past him and away into the darkness. She asked in a soft muffled voice, "What do you want me to do?"
"Take me to the surface, as fast as you can."
The girl made no answer. Reith wondered if she had heard him. He tried to look into her face; she turned away. Reith twitched off her hat. A strange eerie face looked at him, the bloodless mouth quivering in panic. She was older than her underdeveloped figure suggested, though Reith could not accurately have estimated her age. Her features were wan and dreary, so regular as to be nondescript; her hair, a short black mat, clung to her scalp like a cap of felt.
Reith thought that she seemed anemic and neurasthenic, at once human and non-human, female and sexless.
"Why do you do that?" she asked in a hushed murmur,
"For no particular reason. Curiosity, perhaps."
"It is intimate," she muttered, and put her hands up to her thin cheeks. Reith shrugged, uninterested in her modesty. "I want you to take me to the surface."
"I can't."
"Why not?"
She made no answer.
"Aren't you afraid of me?" Reith asked gently.
"Not as much as the pit."
"The pit is yonder, and convenient."
She gave him a startled glance. "Would you throw me into the pit?"
Reith spoke in what he hoped to be a menacing voice. "I am a fugitive; I intend to reach the surface."
"I don't dare help you." Her voice was soft and matter-of-fact. "The zuzhma kastchai would punish me." She looked at the derrick. "The dark is terrible; we are afraid of the dark. Sometimes the rope is cut and the person is never heard again."
Reith stood baffled. The girl, reading a dire meaning into his silence, said in a meek voice: "Even if I wished to help you, how could I? I know only the way to the Blue Rise pop-out, where I would not be allowed, unless," she added as an afterthought, "I declared myself a Gzhindra. You of course would be taken."
Reith's scheme began to topple around his head. "Then take me to some other exit."
"I know of none. Those are secrets not taught at my level."
"Come over here, under the light," said Reith. "Look at this."
He brought forth the portfolio, opened it and
set it before her. "Show me where we are now."
The girl looked. She made a choking sound and began to tremble. "What is this?"
"Something I took from a Pnume."
"These are the Master Charts! My life is done. I will be thrown into the pit!"
"Please don't complicate such a simple matter," said Reith. "Look at the charts, find a route to the surface, take me there. Then do as you like. No one will know the difference."
The girl stared with a wild, unreasoning gaze. Reith gave her thin shoulder a shake. "What's wrong with you?"
Her voice came in a toneless mutter. "I have seen secrets."
Reith was in no mood to commiserate with troubles so abstract and unreal. "Very well; you've seen the charts. The damage is done. Now look again and find a way to the surface!"
A strange expression came over the thin face. Reith wondered if she had gone mad for a fact. Of all the Pnumekin walking the corridors, what wry providence had directed him to an emotionally unstable girl? ... She was looking at him, for the first time directly and searchingly. "You are a ghian."
"I live on the surface, certainly."
"What is it like? Is it terrible?"
"The surface of Tschai? It has its deficiencies."
"I now must be a Gzhindra."
"It's better than living down here in the dark."
The girl said in her dull voice, "I must go to the ghaun."
"The sooner the better," said Reith. "Look at this map again. Show me where we are."
"I can't look!" moaned the girl. "I dare not look!"
"Come now!" snapped Reith. "It's only paper."
"Only paper! It crawls with secrets, Class Twenty secrets. My mind is too small!"
Reith suspected incipient hysteria, although her voice had remained a soft monotone. "To become a Gzhindra you must reach the surface. To reach the surface we must find an exit, the more secret the better. Here we have secret charts. We are in luck."
She became quiet and even glanced from the corner of her eyes toward the portfolio. "How did you get this?"
"I took it from a Pnume." He pushed the portfolio toward her. "Can you read the symbols?"
"I am trained to read." Gingerly she leaned over the portfolio, to jerk instantly back in fear and revulsion.
Reith forced himself to patience. "You have never seen a map before?"
"I have a level of Four; I know Class Four secrets; I have seen Class Four maps.
This is Class Twenty."
"But you can read this map."
"Yes." The word came with sour distaste. "But I dare not. Only a ghian would think to examine such a powerful document ..." Her voice trailed away to a murmur. "Let alone steal it..."
"What will the Pnume do when they find it is gone?"
The girl looked off over the gulf. "Dark, dark, dark. I will fall forever through the dark."
Reith began to grow restive. The girl seemed able to concentrate only on those ideas rising from her own mind. He directed her attention to the map. "What do the colors signify?"
"The levels and stages."
"And these symbols?"
"Doors, portals, secret ways. Touch-plates. Communication stations. Rises, pop-outs, observation posts."
"Show me where we are now."
Reluctantly she focused her eyes. "Not this sheet. Turn back ... Back ... Back
... Here."' She pointed, her finger a cautious two inches from the paper.
"There. The black mark is the pit. The pink line is the ledge."
"Show me the nearest route to the surface."
"That would be-let me look."
Reith managed a distant and reflective smile: once diverted from her woes, which were real enough, Reith admitted, the girl became instantly intense, and even forgot the exposure of her face.
"Blue-Rise pop-out is here. To get there one would go by this lateral, then up this pale orange ramp. But it is a crowded area, with administrative wickets.
You would be taken and I likewise, now that I have seen the secrets."
The question of responsibility and guilt flickered through Reith's mind, but he put it aside. Cataclysm had come to his life; like the plague it had infected her as well. Perhaps similar ideas circulated in her mind.
She darted a quick sidelong glance again. "How did you come in from the ghaun?"
"The Gzhindra let me down in a sack. I cut my way out before the Pnumekin came.
I hope they decide that the Gzhindra lowered an empty sack."
"With one of the Great Charts missing? No person of the Shelters would touch it.
The zuzhma kastchai will never rest until both you and I are dead."
"I become ever more anxious to escape," said Reith.
"I also," remarked the girl with ingenuous simplicity. "I do not wish to fall."
Reith watched her a moment or two, wondering that she appeared to bear him no rancor; it was as if he had come to her as an elemental calamity-a storm, a lightning-bolt, a flood-against which resentment, argument, entreaty would have been equally useless. Already, he thought, a subtle change had come over her attitude; she bent to inspect the chart somewhat less gingerly than before. She pointed to a pale brown Y. "There's the Palisades exit, where trading is done with the ghian. I have never been so far."
"Could we go up at this point?"
"Never. The zuzhma kastchai guard against the Dirdir. There is continual vigilance."
Reith pointed to the other pale brown Y's. "These are other openings to the surface?"
"Yes. But if they believe you to be at large, they will block off here and here and here"-she pointed-"and all these openings are barred, and these in Exa section as well."
"Then we must go somewhere else: to other sectors."
The girl's face twitched. "I know nothing of such places."
"Look at the map."
She did his bidding, running her finger close above the mesh of colored lines, but not yet daring to touch the paper itself. "I see here a secret way, Quality Eighteen. It runs from the passage out yonder to Parallel Twelve, and it shortens the way by a half. Then we might go along any of these adits to the freight docks."
Reith rose to his feet. He pulled the hat over his face. "Do I look like a Pnumekin?"
She gave him a brief unsympathetic inspection. "Your face is strange. Your skin is dark from the ghaun weather. Take some dust and wipe it on your face."
Reith did as he was bid; the girl watched with an expressionless gaze; Reith wondered what went on in her mind. She had declared herself an outcast, a Gzhindra, without overmuch agony of the spirit. Or did she contrive a subtle betrayal? "Betrayal" was perhaps unfair, Reith reflected. She had pledged him no faith, she owed him no loyalty, indeed, something considerably the reverse. So how could he control her after they set forth through the passages? Reith pondered and studied her, while she became increasingly agitated. "Why do you look at me like that?"
Reith held out the blue portfolio to her. "Carry this under your cloak, where it won't be seen."
The girl swayed back aghast. "No."
"You must."
"I don't dare. The zuzhma kastchai-"
"Conceal the charts under your cloak," said Reith in a measured voice. "I'm a desperate man, and I'll stop at nothing to return to the surface."
With limp fingers she took the portfolio. Turning her back, and glancing warily over her shoulder at Reith, she tucked the portfolio out of sight under her cloak. "Come then," she croaked. "If we are taken, it is how life must go. Never in my dreaming did I expect to be a Gzhindra."
She opened the portal and looked out into the round chamber. "The way is clear.
Remember, walk softly, do not lean forward. We must pass through Fer junction, and there will be persons at their affairs. The zuzhma kastchai wander everywhere; if we meet one of these, halt, step into the shadows or face the wall; this is the respectful way. Do not move quickly; do not jerk your arms."
She stepped out into the round room and set of
f along the passage. Reith followed five or six paces behind, trying to simulate the Pnumekin gait. He had forced the girl to carry the charts; even so, he was at her mercy. She could run screaming to the first Pnumekin they came upon, and hope for mercy from the Pnume ... The situation was unpredictable.
They walked half a mile, up a ramp, down another and into a main adit. At twenty-foot intervals the narrow doorways opened into the rock; beside each was a fluted pedestal with a flat polished upper surface, the function of which Reith could not calculate. The passage widened and they entered Fer Junction, a large hexagonal hall with a dozen polished marble pillars supporting the ceiling. In dim little booths around the periphery sat Pnumekin writing in ledgers, or occasionally holding vague and seemingly indecisive colloquies with other Pnumekin who had come to seek them out.
The girl wandered to the side and halted. Reith stopped as well.
She glanced at him, then looked thoughtfully toward a Pnumekin in the center of the room: a tall haggard man with an unusually alert posture. Reith stepped into the shadow of a pillar and watched the girl. Her face was blank as a plate but Reith knew her to be reviewing the circumstances which had overwhelmed her pale existence, and his life depended on the balance of her fears: the bottomless gulf against the windy brown skies of the surface.
Slowly she moved toward Reith and joined him in the shadow of the pillar. For the moment at least she had made her decision.
"The tall man yonder: he is a Listening Monitor. Notice how he observes all?
Nothing escapes him."
For a period Reith stood watching the Listening Monitor, becoming each minute more disinclined to cross the chamber. He muttered to the girl, "Do you know another route to the freight docks?"
She pondered the matter. Having committed herself to flight, her personality had become somewhat more focused, as if danger had drawn her up out of the dreaming inversion of her former existence.
"I think," she said dubiously, "that another route passes by way of the work halls; but it is a long way and other Listening Monitors are on hand."
