by Jack Vance
I am a living fossil, a curio among curios, a public ward, a creature denied the option of life or death. This was what Dr. Jones had come to explain to me, as if I were a retarded child. He was as kindly as he knows how, but unusually emphatic. Presently he departed and I was left to myself, in whatever privacy the scrutiny of a half a dozen pairs of eyes allows.
It is harder to kill one’s self than one might imagine. I have considered the matter carefully, examining every object within my control for lethal potentialities. But my servants are preternaturally careful. Nothing in this house could so much as bruise me. And when I leave the house, as I am privileged to do, gravity deflectors allow me no profit from high places, and in this exquisitely organized civilization there are no dangerous vehicles or heavy machinery in which I could mangle myself.
In the final analysis I am flung upon my own resources. I have an idea. Tonight I shall take a firm grasp on my head and try to break my neck…
Dr. Jones came as always, and inspected me with his usual reproach. “Henry Revere, you trouble us all with your discontent. Why can’t you reconcile yourself to life as you have always known it?”
“Because I am bored! I have experienced everything. There is no more possibility of novelty or surprise! I feel so sure of events that I could predict the future!”
He was rather more serious than usual. “You are our guest. You must realize that our only concern is to ensure your safety.”
“But I don’t want safety! Quite the reverse!”
Dr. Jones ignored me. “You must make up your mind to cooperate. Otherwise—” he paused significantly “—we will be forced into a course of action that will detract from the dignity of us all.”
“Nothing could detract any further from my dignity,” I replied bitterly. “I am hardly better than an animal in a zoo.”
“That is neither your fault nor ours. We all must fulfill our existences to the optimum. Today your function is to serve as vinculum with the past.”
He departed. I was left to my thoughts. The threats had been veiled but were all too clear. I was to desist from further attempts upon my life or suffer additional restraint.
I went out on the terrace, and stood looking across the ocean, where the sun was setting into a bed of golden clouds. I was beset by a dejection so vast that I felt stifled. Completely weary of a world to which I had become alien, I was yet denied freedom to take my leave. Everywhere I looked were avenues to death: the deep ocean, the heights of the palisade, the glitter of energy in the city. Death was a privilege, a bounty, a prize, and it was denied to me.
I returned to my study and leafed through some old maps. The house was silent—as if I were alone. I knew differently. Silent feet moved behind the walls, which were transparent to the eyes above these feet, but opaque to mine. Gauzy webs of artificial nerve tissue watched me from various parts of the room. I had only to make a sudden gesture to bring an anaesthetic beam snapping at me.
I sighed, slumped into my chair. I saw with the utmost clarity that never could I kill myself by my own instrumentality. Must I then submit to an intolerable existence? I sat looking bleakly at the nacreous wall behind which eyes noted my every act.
No, I would never submit. I must seek some means outside myself, a force of destruction to strike without warning: a lightning bolt, an avalanche, an earthquake.
Such natural cataclysms, however, were completely beyond my power to ordain or even predict.
I considered radioactivity. If by some pretext I could expose myself to a sufficient number of roentgens…
I sat back in my chair, suddenly excited. In the early days atomic wastes were sometimes buried, sometimes blended with concrete and dropped into the ocean. If only I were able to—but no. Dr. Jones would hardly allow me to dig in the desert or dive in the ocean, even if the radioactivity were not yet vitiated.
Some other disaster must be found in which I could serve the role of a casualty. If, for instance, I had foreknowledge of some great meteor, and where it would strike…
The idea awoke an almost forgotten association. I sat up in my chair. Then, conscious that knowledgeable minds speculated upon my every expression, I once again slumped forlornly.
Behind the passive mask of my face, my mind was racing, recalling ancient events. The time was too far past, the circumstances obscured. But details could be found in my great History of Man.
I must by all means avoid suspicion. I yawned, feigned acute ennui. Then with an air of surly petulance, I secured the box of numbered rods which was my index. I dropped one of them into the viewer, focused on the molecule-wide items of information.
Someone might be observing me. I rambled here and there, consulting articles and essays totally unrelated to my idea: The Origin and Greatest Development of the Dithyramb; The Kalmuk Tyrants; New Camelot, 18119 A.D.; Oestheotics; The Caves of Phrygia; The Exploration of Mars; The Launching of the Satellites. I undertook no more than a glance at this last; it would not be wise to show any more than a flicker of interest. But what I read corroborated the inkling which had tickled the back of my mind.
The date was during the twentieth century, during what would have been my normal lifetime.
The article read in part:
Today HESPERUS, last of the unmanned satellites, was launched into orbit around Earth. This great machine will swing above the equator at a height of a thousand miles, where atmospheric resistance is so scant as to be negligible. Not quite negligible, of course; it is estimated that in something less than a hundred thousand years HESPERUS will lose enough momentum to return to Earth.
Let us hope that no citizen of that future age suffers injury when HESPERUS falls.
I grunted and muttered. A fatuous sentiment! Let us hope that one person, at the very least, suffers injury. Injury enough to erase him from life!
I continued to glance through the monumental work which had occupied so much of my time. I listened to aquaclave music from the old Poly-Pacific Empire; read a few pages from The Revolt of the Manitobans. Then, yawning and simulating hunger, I called for my evening meal.
Tomorrow I must locate more exact information, and brush up on orbital mathematics.
The Hesperus will drop into the Pacific Ocean at Latitude 0° 0’ 0.0” ± 0.1”, Longitude 141° 12’ 36.9” ± 0.2”, at 2 hours 22 minutes 18 seconds after standard noon on January 13 of next year. It will strike with a velocity of approximately one thousand miles an hour, and I hope to be on hand to absorb a certain percentage of its inertia.
I have been occupied seven months establishing these figures. Considering the necessary precautions, the dissimulation, the delicacy of the calculations, seven months is a short time to accomplish as much as I have. I see no reason why my calculations should not be accurate. The basic data were recorded to the necessary refinement and there have been no variables or fluctuations to cause error.
I have considered light pressure, hysteresis, meteoric dust; I have reckoned the calendar reforms which have occurred over the years; I have allowed for any possible Einsteinian, Gambade, or Kolbinski perturbation. What is there left to disturb the Hesperus? Its orbit lies in the equatorial plane, south of spaceship channels; to all intents and purposes it has been forgotten.
The last mention of the Hesperus occurs about eleven thousand years after it was launched. I find a note to the effect that its orbital position and velocity were in exact accordance with theoretical values. I believe I can be certain that the Hesperus will fall on schedule.
The most cheerful aspect to the entire affair is that no one is aware of the impending disaster but myself.
The date is January 9. To every side long blue swells are rolling, rippled with cat’s-paws. Above are blue skies and dazzling white clouds. The yacht slides quietly south-west in the general direction of the Marquesas Islands.
Dr. Jones had no enthusiasm for this cruise. At first he tried to dissuade me from what he considered a whim but I insisted, reminding him that I was theoreticall
y a free man, and he made no further difficulty.
The yacht is graceful, swift, and seems as fragile as a moth. But when we cut through the long swells there is no shudder or vibration—only a gentle elastic heave. If I had hoped to lose myself overboard, I would have suffered disappointment. I am shepherded as carefully as in my own house. But for the first time in many years I am relaxed and happy. Dr. Jones notices and approves.
The weather is beautiful—the water so blue, the sun so bright, the air so fresh that I almost feel a qualm at leaving this life. Still, now is my chance and I must seize it. I regret that Dr. Jones and the crew must die with me. Still—what do they lose? Very little. A few short years. This is the risk they assume when they guard me. If I could allow them survival I would do so—but there is no such possibility.
I have requested and have been granted nominal command of the yacht. That is to say, I plot the course, I set the speed. Dr. Jones looks on with indulgent amusement, pleased that I interest myself in matters outside myself.
January 12. Tomorrow is my last day of life. We passed through a series of rain squalls this morning, but the horizon ahead is clear. I expect good weather tomorrow.
I have throttled down to Dead-Slow, as we are only a few hundred miles from our destination.
January 13. I am tense, active, charged with vitality and awareness. Every part of me tingles. On this day of my death it is good to be alive. And why? Because of anticipation, eagerness, hope.
I am trying to mask my euphoria. Dr. Jones is extremely sensitive; I would not care to start his mind working at this late date.
The time is noon. I keep my appointment with Hesperus in two hours and twenty-two minutes. The yacht is coasting easily over the water. Our position, as recorded by a pin-point of light on the chart, is only a few miles from our final position. At this present rate we will arrive in about two hours and fifteen minutes. Then I will halt the yacht and wait…
The yacht is motionless on the ocean. Our position is exactly at Latitude 0° 0’ 0.0”, Longitude 141° 12’ 36.9”. The degree of error represents no more than a yard or two. This graceful yacht with the unpronounceable name sits directly on the bull’s-eye. There is only five minutes to wait.
Dr. Jones comes into the cabin. He inspects me curiously. “You seem very keyed up, Henry Revere.”
“Yes, I feel keyed up, stimulated. This cruise is affording me much pleasure.”
“Excellent!” He walks to the chart, glances at it. “Why are we halted?”
“I took it into mind to drift quietly. Are you impatient?”
Time passes—minutes, seconds. I watch the chronometer. Dr. Jones follows my glance. He frowns in sudden recollection, goes to the telescreen. “Excuse me; something I would like to watch. You might be interested.”
The screen depicts an arid waste. “The Kalahari Desert,” Dr. Jones tells me. “Watch.”
I glance at the chronometer. Ten seconds—they tick off. Five—four—three—two—one. A great whistling sound, a roar, a crash, an explosion! It comes from the telescreen. The yacht rides on a calm sea.
“There went Hesperus,” said Dr. Jones. “Right on schedule!”
He looks at me, where I have sagged against a bulkhead. His eyes narrow, he looks at the chronometer, at the chart, at the telescreen, back to me. “Ah, I understand you now! All of us you would have killed!”
“Yes,” I mutter, “all of us.”
“Aha! You savage!”
I pay him no heed. “Where could I have miscalculated? I considered everything. Loss of entropic mass, lunar attractions—I know the orbit of Hesperus as I know my hand. How did it shift, and so far?”
Dr. Jones’ eyes shine with a baleful light. “You know the orbit of Hesperus then?”
“Yes. I considered every aspect.”
“And you believe it shifted?”
“It must have. It was launched into an equatorial orbit; it falls into the Kalahari.”
“There are two bodies to be considered.”
“Two?”
“Hesperus and Earth.”
“Earth is constant…Unchangeable.” I say this last word slowly, as the terrible knowledge comes.
And Dr. Jones, for the first time in my memory, laughs, an unpleasant harsh sound. “Constant—unchangeable. Except for libration of the poles. Hesperus is the constant. Earth shifts below.”
“Yes! What a fool I am!”
“An insensate murdering fool! I see you cannot be trusted!”
I charge him. I strike him once in the face before the anaesthetic beam hits me.
Afterword to “Where Hesperus Falls”
Words, words, words are the enemy of a writer. I take great pleasure in simplifying language and sentences whenever I can. If I’ve started something, I write through to the end of the paragraph or section, then go back and prune out whole sentences. I’m pleased if I reach the end having deleted thirty sentences, making the thing tighter without losing any of the impact.
Of course, I keep having to go back to make sure that I have the right words and no repetition. Norma catches a lot of this, and it’s a great deal of work. I liked it much better in the old days when I could still see and could assimilate a whole page at a time like other writers do.
You mustn’t try too hard to produce effects either. They have to come kind of quietly, sneaking up on you out of the action and feeling. When you want to describe something that’s flamboyant, weird and strange, anything a little bit outrageous, wicked or nasty, you don’t do it by exposition, which can become long-winded and tiresome. You have one of your characters describe it to somebody else. Instead of writing that a man is an evil beast, without a redeeming quality, you have a girl come in out of the cold with her clothes torn and say: ‘I met this fellow, Steve, and he did such and such. That man is a beast. Do you know what he did to Henrietta? He pulled all her hair out.’ I’m exaggerating, but this is almost a trade secret: not having the exposition come from the writer, but rather from the mouths of the characters themselves.
So cut those words out. Sometimes you can combine the adjective and the noun into a single notion. Instead of saying there was a horse colored all kinds of different colors, you say a palomino came down the road.
—Jack Vance
The Phantom Milkman
I’ve had all I can stand. I’ve got to get out, away from the walls, the glass, the white stone, the black asphalt. All of a sudden I see the city for the terrible place that it is. Lights burn my eyes, voices crawl on my skin like sticky insects, and I notice that the people look like insects too. Burly brown beetles, wispy mosquito-men in tight black trousers, sour sow-bug women, mantids and scorpions, fat little dung-beetles, wasp-girls gliding with poisonous nicety, children like loathsome little flies…This isn’t a pleasant thought; I must not think of people so; the picture could linger to bother me. I think I’m a hundred times more sensitive than anyone else in the world, and I’m given to very strange fancies. I could list some that would startle you, and it’s just as well that I don’t. But I do have this frantic urge to flee the city; it’s settled. I’m going.
I consult my maps—there’s the Andes, the Atlas, the Altai; Mt. Godwin-Austin, Mt. Kilimanjaro; Stromboli and Etna. I compare Siberia above Baikal Nor with the Pacific between Antofagasta and Easter Island. Arabia is hot; Greenland is cold. Tristan da Cunha is very remote; Bouvet even more so. There’s Timbuktu, Zanzibar, Bali, the Great Australian Bight.
I am definitely leaving the city. I have found a cabin in Maple Valley, four miles west of Sunbury. It stands a hundred feet back from Maple Valley Road, under two tall trees. It has three rooms and a porch, a fireplace, a good roof, a good well and windmill.
Mrs. Lipscomb is skeptical, even a little shocked. “A good-looking girl like you shouldn’t go off by yourself; time to hide away when you’re old and nobody wants you.” She predicts hair-raising adventures, but I don’t care. I was married to Poole for six weeks; nothing could happen that would be any wo
rse.
I’m in my new house. There’s lots of work ahead of me: scrubbing, chopping wood. I’ll probably bulge with muscles before the winter’s over.
My cats are delighted. They are Homer and Moses. Homer is yellow; Moses is black and white. Which reminds me: milk. I saw a Sunbury Dairy delivery truck on the highway. I’ll write them an order now.
Sunbury Dairy
November 14
Sunbury
Dear Sirs:
Please leave me a quart of milk three times a week on whatever days are convenient. Please bill me.
Isabel Durbrow
RFD Route 2, Box 82
Sunbury
My mailbox is battered and dusty; one day I’ll paint it: red, white and blue, to cheer the mailman. He delivers at ten in the morning, in an old blue panel truck.
When I mail the letter, I see that there’s already one in the box. It’s for me—forwarded from the city by Mrs. Lipscomb. I take it slowly. I don’t want it; I recognize the handwriting: it’s from Poole, the dark-visaged brute I woke up from childhood to find myself married to. I tear it in pieces; I’m not even curious. I’m still young and very pretty, but right now there’s no one I want, Poole least of all. I shall wear blue jeans and write by the fireplace all winter; and in the spring, who knows?
During the night the wind comes up; the windmill cries from the cold. I lie in bed, with Homer and Moses at my feet. The coals in the fireplace flicker…Tomorrow I’ll write Mrs. Lipscomb; by no means must she give Poole my address.
