Hard-Luck Diggings: The Early Jack Vance, Volume One

by Jack Vance

  Gildig stretched his arm; from under his wrist, out his sleeve shot a tube of metal three feet long, already swinging to the pull of Gildig’s wrist. Jarvis sprang back, the tube struck him on the bruised hip; he shot the sliver-spit. Gildig’s hand was gone—exploded.

  “Kill, kill,” sang the old man, dodging back.

  The door opened; a sedate handsome man came in. “I am Belson.”

  “The traitor, Belson,” cried the old man. “Jarvis, the traitor!”

  “No, no,” said Jarvis. “I can tell you better.”

  “Speak, Jarvis—your last moment!”

  “I was on Fenn, yes! I was the new recruit, yes! It was my blood, yes!…But traitor, no! I was the man left for dead when the traitor went.”

  “And who is this traitor?”

  “Who was on Fenn? Who was quick to raise the cry for Jarvis? Who knew of the treasure?”

  “Pah!” said the old man, as Belson’s mild glance swung toward him.

  “Who just now spoke of the sun rising at the hour of the deed?”

  “A mistake!”

  “A mistake, indeed!”

  “Yes, Finch,” said Belson to the old man, “how did you know so closely the hour of the theft?”

  “An estimate, a guess, an intelligent deduction.”

  Belson turned to Gildig, who had been standing stupidly clutching the stump of his arm. “Go, Gildig; get yourself a new hand at the clinic. Give them the name Belisarius.”

  “Yes, sir.” Gildig tottered out.

  “You, Noel,” said Belson, “Book you a passage to Achernar; go to Pasatiempo, await word at the Auberge Bacchanal.”

  “Yes, Belson.” Noel departed.

  “Tixon—”

  “Captain Pardee is my name, Belson.”

  “—I have no need for you now, but I will keep your well-known abilities in mind.”

  “Thank you sir, good-day .” Tixon departed.

  “Conrad, I have a parcel to be travelled to the city Sudanapolis on Earth; await me at Suite RS above.”

  “Very good, Belson.” Conrad wheeled, marched out the door.

  “Jarvis.”

  “Yes, Belson.”

  “I will speak to you further today. Await me in the lobby.”

  “Very well.” Jarvis turned, started from the room. He heard Belson say quietly to the old man, “And now, Finch, as for you—” and then further words and sounds were cut off by the closing of the door.

  Afterword to “Shape-Up”

  This time it was Tahiti that beckoned.

  Preparations were made; and one day in 1965 we set off [and] arrived at the Faaa’s International Airport, three miles southwest of Papeete, and for the first day or so put up in a rather run-down hotel. A few days later we came upon a house for rent in the district known as Paea, near the beach about twelve miles east of Papeete…We settled in, set up housekeeping, and began to churn out fiction. These were absolutely idyllic circumstances. Along the driveway were pineapple bushes, although I don’t think we ever harvested any pineapple. In the back yard was a lime tree full of fruit, in the front a custard apple tree, which dropped custard apples on the roof of our house, which always made a thunderous bang. For supplies unavailable at the Chinese grocery, Norma rode the bus into Papeete and then back, which was no great ordeal…

  We received news of an unfortunate occurrence back in New York. One of Scott Meredith’s associates sold one of my stories to Frederick Pohl, who was currently editor of Galaxy magazine, but then unwittingly sold the same story to another publication. This meant that Fred Pohl could not use the story and there was all hell to pay. Scott Meredith fired the guilty associate, but no one made any move to reimburse me, so I simply gritted my teeth and sat down to write another story for Fred. This became The Last Castle, which turned out to be a pretty good story.

  —Jack Vance

  Sjambak

  Howard Frayberg, Production Director of Know Your Universe!, was a man of sudden unpredictable moods; and Sam Catlin, the show’s Continuity Editor, had learned to expect the worst.

  “Sam,” said Frayberg, “regarding the show last night…” He paused to seek the proper words, and Catlin relaxed. Frayberg’s frame of mind was merely critical. “Sam, we’re in a rut. What’s worse, the show’s dull!”

  Sam Catlin shrugged, not committing himself.

  “Seaweed Processors of Alphard IX—who cares about seaweed?”

  “It’s factual stuff,” said Sam, defensive but not wanting to go too far out on a limb. “We bring ’em everything—color, fact, romance, sight, sound, smell…Next week, it’s the Ball Expedition to the Mixtup Mountains on Gropus.”

  Frayberg leaned forward. “Sam, we’re working the wrong slant on this stuff…We’ve got to loosen up, sock ’em! Shift our ground! Give ’em the old human angle—glamor, mystery, thrills!”

  Sam Catlin curled his lips. “I got just what you want.”

  “Yeah? Show me.”

  Catlin reached into his waste basket. “I filed this just ten minutes ago…” He smoothed out the pages. “‘Sequence idea, by Wilbur Murphy. Investigate “Horseman of Space”, the man who rides up to meet incoming spaceships’.”

  Frayberg tilted his head to the side. “Rides up on a horse?”

  “That’s what Wilbur Murphy says.”

  “How far up?”

  “Does it make any difference?”

  “No—I guess not.”

  “Well, for your information, it’s up ten thousand, twenty thousand miles. He waves to the pilot, takes off his hat to the passengers, then rides back down.”

  “And where does all this take place?”

  “On—on—” Catlin frowned. “I can write it, but I can’t pronounce it.” He printed on his scratch-screen: CIRGAMESÇ.

  “Sirgamesk,” read Frayberg.

  Catlin shook his head. “That’s what it looks like—but those consonants are all aspirated gutturals. It’s more like ‘Hrrghameshgrrh’.”

  “Where did Murphy get this tip?”

  “I didn’t bother to ask.”

  “Well,” mused Frayberg, “we could always do a show on strange superstitions. Is Murphy around?”

  “He’s explaining his expense account to Shifkin.”

  “Get him in here; let’s talk to him.”

  Wilbur Murphy had a blond crew-cut, a broad freckled nose, and a serious sidelong squint. He looked from his crumpled sequence idea to Catlin and Frayberg. “Didn’t like it, eh?”

  “We thought the emphasis should be a little different,” explained Catlin. “Instead of ‘The Space Horseman’, we’d give it the working title, ‘Odd Superstitions of Hrrghameshgrrh’.”

  “Oh, hell!” said Frayberg. “Call it Sirgamesk.”

  “Anyway,” said Catlin, “that’s the angle.”

  “But it’s not superstition,” said Murphy.

  “Oh, come, Wilbur…”

  “I got this for sheer sober-sided fact. A man rides a horse up to meet the incoming ships!”

  “Where did you get this wild fable?”

  “My brother-in-law is purser on the Celestial Traveller. At Riker’s Planet they make connection with the feeder line out of Cirgamesç.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Catlin. “How did you pronounce that?”

  “Cirgamesç. The steward on the shuttle-ship gave out this story, and my brother-in-law passed it along to me.”

  “Somebody’s pulling somebody’s leg.”

  “My brother-in-law wasn’t, and the steward was cold sober.”

  “They’ve been eating bhang. Sirgamesk is a Javanese planet, isn’t it?”

  “Javanese, Arab, Malay.”

  “Then they took a bhang supply with them, and hashish, chat, and a few other sociable herbs.”

  “Well, this horseman isn’t any drug-dream.”

  “No? What is it?”

  “So far as I know it’s a man on a horse.”

  “Ten thousand miles up? In a vacuum?”

 
“Exactly.”

  “No space-suit?”

  “That’s the story.”

  Catlin and Frayberg looked at each other.

  “Well, Wilbur,” Catlin began.

  Frayberg interrupted. “What we can use, Wilbur, is a sequence on Sirgamesk superstition. Emphasis on voodoo or witchcraft—naked girls dancing—stuff with roots in Earth, but now typically Sirgamesk. Lots of color. Secret rite stuff…”

  “Not much room on Cirgamesç for secret rites.”

  “It’s a big planet, isn’t it?”

  “Not quite as big as Mars. There’s no atmosphere. The settlers live in mountain valleys, with airtight lids over ’em.”

  Catlin flipped the pages of Thumbnail Sketches of the Inhabited Worlds. “Says here there’s ancient ruins millions of years old. When the atmosphere went, the population went with it.”

  Frayberg became animated. “There’s lots of material out there! Go get it, Wilbur! Life! Sex! Excitement! Mystery!”

  “Okay,” said Wilbur Murphy.

  “But lay off this horseman-in-space . There is a limit to public credulity, and don’t you let anyone tell you different.”

  Cirgamesç hung outside the port, twenty thousand miles ahead. The steward leaned over Wilbur Murphy’s shoulder and pointed a long brown finger. “It was right out there, sir. He came riding up—”

  “What kind of a man was it? Strange looking?”

  “No. He was Cirgameski.”

  “Oh. You saw him with your own eyes, eh?”

  The steward bowed, and his loose white mantle fell forward. “Exactly, sir.”

  “No helmet, no space-suit?”

  “He wore a short Singhalût vest and pantaloons and a yellow Hadrasi hat. No more.”

  “And the horse?”

  “Ah, the horse! There’s a different matter.”

  “Different how?”

  “I can’t describe the horse. I was intent on the man.”

  “Did you recognize him?”

  “By the brow of Lord Allah, it’s well not to look too closely when such matters occur.”

  “Then—you did recognize him!”

  “I must be at my task, sir.”

  Murphy frowned in vexation at the steward’s retreating back, then bent over his camera to check the tape-feed. If anything appeared now, and his eyes could see it, the two-hundred million audience of Know Your Universe! could see it with him.

  When he looked up, Murphy made a frantic grab for the stanchion, then relaxed. Cirgamesç had taken the Great Twitch. It was an illusion, a psychological quirk. One instant the planet lay ahead; then a man winked or turned away, and when he looked back, ‘ahead’ had become ‘below’; the planet had swung an astonishing ninety degrees across the sky, and they were falling!

  Murphy leaned against the stanchion. “‘The Great Twitch’,” he muttered to himself, “I’d like to get that on two hundred million screens!”

  Several hours passed. Cirgamesç grew. The Sampan Range rose up like a dark scab; the valley sultanates of Singhalût, Hadra, New Batavia, and Boeng-Bohôt showed like glistening chicken-tracks; the Great Rift Colony of Sundaman stretched down through the foothills like the trail of a slug.

  A loudspeaker voice rattled the ship. “Attention passengers for Singhalût and other points on Cirgamesç! Kindly prepare your luggage for disembarkation. Customs at Singhalût are extremely thorough. Passengers are warned to take no weapons, drugs or explosives ashore. This is important!”

  The warning turned out to be an understatement. Murphy was plied with questions. He suffered search of an intimate nature. He was three-dimensionally X-rayed with a range of frequencies calculated to excite fluorescence in whatever object he might have secreted in his stomach, in a hollow bone, or under a layer of flesh.

  His luggage was explored with similar minute attention, and Murphy rescued his cameras with difficulty. “What’re you so damn anxious about? I don’t have drugs; I don’t have contraband…”

  “It’s guns, your Excellency. Guns, weapons, explosives…”

  “I don’t have any guns.”

  “But these objects here?”

  “They’re cameras. They record pictures and sounds and smells.”

  The inspector seized the cases with a glittering smile of triumph. “They resemble no cameras of my experience; I fear I shall have to impound…”

  A young man in loose white pantaloons, a pink vest, pale green cravat and a complex black turban strolled up. The inspector made a swift obeisance, with arms spread wide. “Excellency.”

  The young man raised two fingers. “You may find it possible to spare Mr. Murphy any unnecessary formality.”

  “As your Excellency recommends…” The inspector nimbly repacked Murphy’s belongings, while the young man looked on benignly.

  Murphy covertly inspected his face. The skin was smooth, the color of the rising moon; the eyes were narrow, dark, superficially placid. The effect was of silken punctilio with hot ruby blood close beneath.

  Satisfied with the inspector’s zeal, he turned to Murphy. “Allow me to introduce myself, Tuan Murphy. I am Ali-Tomás, of the House of Singhalût, and my father the Sultan begs you to accept our poor hospitality.”

  “Why, thank you,” said Murphy. “This is a very pleasant surprise.”

  “If you will allow me to conduct you…” He turned to the inspector. “Mr. Murphy’s luggage to the palace.”

  Murphy accompanied Ali-Tomás into the outside light, fitting his own quick step to the prince’s feline saunter. This is coming it pretty soft, he said to himself. I’ll have a magnificent suite, with bowls of fruit and gin pahits, not to mention two or three silken girls with skin like rich cream bringing me towels in the shower…Well, well, well, it’s not so bad working for Know Your Universe! after all! I suppose I ought to unlimber my camera…

  Prince Ali-Tomás watched him with interest. “And what is the audience of Know Your Universe!?”

  “We call ’em ‘participants’.”

  “Expressive. And how many participants do you serve?”

  “Oh, the Bowdler Index rises and falls. We’ve got about two hundred million screens, with five hundred million participants.”

  “Fascinating! And tell me—how do you record smells?”

  Murphy displayed the odor recorder on the side of the camera, with its gelatinous track which fixed the molecular design.

  “And the odors recreated—they are like the originals?”

  “Pretty close. Never exact, but none of the participants knows the difference. Sometimes the synthetic odor is an improvement.”

  “Astounding!” murmured the prince.

  “And sometimes…Well, Carson Tenlake went out to get the myrrh-blossoms on Venus. It was a hot day—as days usually are on Venus—and a long climb. When the show was run off, there was more smell of Carson than of flowers.”

  Prince Ali-Tomás laughed politely. “We turn through here.”

  They came out into a compound paved with red, green and white tiles. Beneath the valley roof was a sinuous trough, full of haze and warmth and golden light. As far in either direction as the eye could reach, the hillsides were terraced, barred in various shades of green. Spattering the valley floor were tall canvas pavilions, tents, booths, shelters.

  “Naturally,” said Prince Ali-Tomás, “we hope that you and your participants will enjoy Singhalût. It is a truism that, in order to import, we must export; we wish to encourage a pleasurable response to the ‘Made in Singhalût’ tag on our batiks, carvings, lacquers.”

  They rolled quietly across the square in a surface-car displaying the House emblem. Murphy rested against deep, cool cushions. “Your inspectors are pretty careful about weapons.”

  Ali-Tomás smiled complacently. “Our existence is ordered and peaceful. You may be familiar with the concept of adak?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “A word, an idea from old Earth. Every living act is ordered by ritual. But our heritage is
passionate—and when unyielding adak stands in the way of an irresistible emotion, there is turbulence, sometimes even killing .”

  “An amok.”

  “Exactly. It is as well that the amok has no weapons other than his knife. Otherwise he would kill twenty where now he kills one.”

  The car rolled along a narrow avenue, scattering pedestrians to either side like the bow of a boat spreading foam. The men wore loose white pantaloons and a short open vest; the women wore only the pantaloons.

  “Handsome set of people,” remarked Murphy.

  Ali-Tomás again smiled complacently. “I’m sure Singhalût will present an inspiring and beautiful spectacle for your program.”

  Murphy remembered the keynote to Howard Frayberg’s instructions: “Excitement! Sex! Mystery!” Frayberg cared little for inspiration or beauty. “I imagine,” he said casually, “that you celebrate a number of interesting festivals? Colorful dancing? Unique customs?”

  Ali-Tomás shook his head. “To the contrary. We left our superstitions and ancestor-worship back on Earth. We are quiet Mohammedans and indulge in very little festivity. Perhaps here is the reason for amoks and sjambaks.”

  “Sjambaks?”

  “We are not proud of them. You will hear sly rumor, and it is better that I arm you beforehand with truth .”

  “What is a sjambak?”

  “They are bandits, flouters of authority. I will show you one presently.”

  “I heard,” said Murphy, “of a man riding a horse up to meet the spaceships. What would account for a story like that?”

  “It can have no possible basis,” said Prince Ali-Tomás. “We have no horses on Cirgamesç. None whatever.”

  “But…”

  “The veriest idle talk. Such nonsense will have no interest for your intelligent participants.”

  The car rolled into a square a hundred yards on a side, lined with luxuriant banana palms. Opposite was an enormous pavilion of gold and violet silk, with a dozen peaked gables casting various changing sheens. In the center of the square a twenty-foot pole supported a cage about two feet wide, three feet long, and four feet high.