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

by Jack Vance

  The clock strikes twelve. Someone taps at the door. Poole jerks around, looks at the door, then at me.

  I jump to my feet. I look at the door.

  “Who’s that?”

  “I—really don’t—know.” I’m not sure. But it’s twelve o’clock; it’s December first. Who else could it be? “It’s—it’s the milkman.” I start for the door—slowly. Of course I don’t intend to open it.

  “Milkman, eh? At midnight?” He jumps up, catches my arm. “Come to collect the milk bill, I suppose.”

  “That’s quite right.” My voice sounds weird and dry.

  “Maybe he’d like to collect from me.”

  “I’ll take care of him, Poole.” I try to pull away, knowing that whatever I seem to want he won’t allow. “Let me go.”

  “I’ll pay your milk bill…After all, dear,” he says silkily, “I’m your husband.”

  He shoves me across the room, goes to the door. I bury my face in my arms.

  The door swings wide. “So you’re the milkman,” he says. His voice trails away. I hear a sudden gasp. I don’t look.

  Poole is paying the milk bill.

  The door creaks slowly shut. A quick shuffle of steps on the porch, a crunching of snow.

  After a while I get up, prop a chair under the door knob, build up the fire. I sit looking at the flames. I don’t go near the window.

  The cold yellow dawn-sun is shining through the window. The room is cold. I build a roaring fire, put on the coffee, look around the cabin. I’ve put in lots of work, but I don’t have much to pack. Howard is coming today. He can help me.

  The sun shines bright through the window. At last—I open the door, step out on the porch. The sun is dazzling on the snow. I wonder where Poole is. There’s a shuffle of prints around the door, but away from the porch the snow is pure and clean. His convertible sits in the road.

  A milk bill is stuck in a bottle and it’s marked, “Paid in full.”

  I go inside the house, where I drink coffee, pet Homer and Moses, and try to stop my hands from shaking.

  Afterword to “The Phantom Milkman”

  “The Phantom Milkman” derives from a rainy evening and several batches of rum punch in an old farm-house behind Kenwood, California, where the Vances and the Frank Herberts had taken up residence prior to departure for Mexico. Someone—or something—had delivered a quart of milk to the door-step that morning. All day Norma and Beverly had been attempting to resolve the mystery, without success. We discussed the affair long into the night, and at last decided that in the absence of trained and experienced investigators, it might be foolhardy to proceed further…

  Leaving Kenwood we drove south through California, across the border, down the west coast of Mexico, turned eastward to Guadalajara, then thirty miles further to Lake Chapala, which at that time had lost most of its water and was mainly mud flats. Here in Chapala we rented a very pleasant house a block or two from the main beer garden, which was always a source of amusement and entertainment, because musicians rolled through the place every night.

  We set up our writers’ workshop. We had an arrangement that when we hoisted a white flag, silence must descend upon the house, and nothing must occur that might disturb the writers, a system which worked out fairly well.

  Life proceeded productively for a month or two. I don’t know what Frank was writing; I wrote some short stories and started work on a novel which I called Clarges but which was ultimately published under the name To Live Forever, a title I detest. However, our income was less than our output, and in fact was nonexistent. Finally we were forced to terminate the writers’ workshop and return to the States.

  —Jack Vance

  Dodkin’s Job

  The Theory of Organized Society—as developed by Kinch, Kolbig, Penton and others—yields such a wealth of significant information, such manifold intricacies and portentous projections, that occasionally it is well to consider the deceptively simple premise—here stated by Kolbig:

  When self-willed micro-units combine to form and sustain a durable macro-unit, certain freedoms of action are curtailed.

  This is the basic process of Organization.

  The more numerous and erratic the micro-units, the more complex must be the structure and function of the macro-unit—hence the more pervasive and restricting the details of Organization.

  —from Leslie Penton, First Principles of Organization

  In general the population of the City had become forgetful of curtailed freedoms, as a snake no longer remembers the legs of his forebears. Somewhere someone has stated, “When the discrepancy between the theory and practice of a culture is very great, this indicates that the culture is undergoing rapid change.” By such a test the culture of the City was stable, if not static. The population ordered their lives by schedule, classification and precedent, satisfied with the bland rewards of Organization.

  But in the healthiest tissue bacteria exist, and the most negligible impurity flaws a critical crystallization. Luke Grogatch was forty, thin and angular, dour of forehead, sardonic of mouth and eyebrow, with a sidewise twist to his head as if he suffered from earache. He was too astute to profess Nonconformity, too perverse to strive for improved status, too pessimistic, captious, sarcastic and outspoken to keep the jobs to which he found himself assigned. Each new reclassification depressed his status, each new job he disliked with increasing fervor.

  Finally, rated as Flunky/Class D/Unskilled, Luke was dispatched to the District 8892 Sewer Maintenance Department and from there ordered out as night-shift swamper on Tunnel Gang No. 3’s rotary drilling machine.

  Reporting for work, Luke presented himself to the gang foreman, Fedor Miskitman, a big buffalo-faced man with flaxen hair and placid blue eyes. Miskitman produced a shovel and took Luke to a position close up behind the drilling machine’s cutting head. Here, said Miskitman, was Luke’s station. Luke would be required to keep the tunnel floor clean of loose rock and gravel. When the tunnel broke through into an old sewer, there would be scale and that detritus known as ‘wet waste’ to remove. Luke must keep the dust trap clean and in optimum adjustment. During the breaks he must lubricate those bearings isolated from the automatic lubrication system, and replace broken teeth on the cutting head as necessary.

  Luke inquired if this was the extent of his duties, his voice strong with an irony the guileless Fedor Miskitman failed to notice.

  “That is all,” said Miskitman. He handed Luke the shovel. “Mostly it is the trash. The floor must be clean.”

  Luke suggested a modification of the hopper jaws which would tend to eliminate the spill of broken rock; in fact, argued Luke, why bother at all? Let the rock lay where it fell. The concrete lining of the tunnel would mask so trivial a scatter of gravel. Miskitman dismissed the suggestion out of hand: the rock must be removed. Luke asked why, and Miskitman told him, “That is the way the job is done.”

  Luke made a rude noise under his breath. He tested the shovel, and shook his head in dissatisfaction. The handle was too long, the blade too short. He reported this fact to Miskitman, who merely glanced at his watch and signaled the drill operator. The machine whined into revolution, and with an ear-splitting roar made contact with the rock. Miskitman departed, and Luke went to work.

  During the shift he found that if he worked in a half-crouch most of the hot dust-laden exhaust would pass over his head. Changing a cutting tooth during the first rest period he burned a blister on his left thumb. At the end of the shift a single consideration deterred Luke from declaring himself unqualified: he would be declassified from Flunky/Class D/Unskilled to Junior Executive, with a corresponding cut in expense account. Such a declassification would take him to the very bottom of the Status List, and could not be countenanced; his present expense account was barely adequate, comprising nutrition at a Type RP Victualing Service, sleeping space in a Sublevel 22 dormitory, and sixteen Special Coupons per month. He took Class 14 Erotic Processing, and was allowed twelve hours per month at
his Recreation Club, with optional use of barbells, table-tennis equipment, two miniature bowling alleys, and any of the six telescreens tuned permanently to Band H.

  Luke often daydreamed of a more sumptuous life: AAA nutrition, a suite of rooms for his exclusive use, Special Coupons by the bale, Class 7 Erotic Processing, or even Class 6, or 5: despite Luke’s contempt for the High Echelon he had no quarrel with High Echelon perquisites. And always as a bitter coda to the daydreams came the conviction that he might have enjoyed these good things in all reality. He had watched his fellows jockeying; he knew all the tricks and techniques: the beavering, the gregarization, the smutting, knuckling and subuculation…

  “I’d rather be Class D Flunky,” sneered Luke to himself.

  Occasionally a measure of doubt would seep into Luke’s mind. Perhaps he merely lacked the courage to compete, to come to grips with the world! And the seep of doubt would become a trickle of self-contempt. A Nonconformist, that’s what he was—and lacked the courage to admit it!

  Then Luke’s obstinacy would reassert itself. Why admit to Nonconformity when it meant a trip to the Disorganized House? A fool’s trick—and Luke was no fool. Perhaps he was a Nonconformist in all reality; again perhaps not—he had never really made up his mind. He presumed that he was suspected; occasionally he intercepted queer side-glances and significant jerks of the head among his fellow workers. Let them leer. They could prove nothing.

  But now…he was Luke Grogatch, Class D Flunky, separated by a single status from the nonclassified sediment of criminals, idiots, children and proved Nonconformists. Luke Grogatch, who had dreamed such dreams of the High Echelon, of pride and independence! Instead—Luke Grogatch, Class D Flunky. Taking orders from a hay-headed lunk, working with semiskilled laborers with status almost as low as his own: Luke Grogatch, flunky.

  Seven weeks passed. Luke’s dislike for his job became a mordant passion. The work was arduous, hot, repellent. Fedor Miskitman turned an uncomprehending gaze on Luke’s most rancorous grimaces, grunted and shrugged at Luke’s suggestions and arguments. This was the way things were done—his manner implied—always had been done, and always would be done.

  Fedor Miskitman received a daily policy directive from the works superintendent which he read to the crew during the first rest break of the shift. These directives generally dealt with such matters as work norms, team spirit and cooperation; pleas for a finer polish on the concrete; warnings against off-shift indulgence which might dull enthusiasm and decrease work efficiency. Luke usually paid small heed, until one day Fedor Miskitman, pulling out the familiar yellow sheet, read in his stolid voice:

  PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT, PUBLIC UTILITIES DIVISION

  AGENCY OF SANITARY WORKS, DISTRICT 8892

  SEWAGE DISPOSAL SECTION

  Bureau of Sewer Construction and Maintenance

  Office of Procurement

  Policy Directive:

  6511 Series BV96

  Order Code:

  GZP—AAR—REG

  Reference:

  G98—7542

  Date Code:

  BT—EQ—LLT

  Authorized:

  LL8—P-SC 8892

  Checked:

  48

  Counterchecked:

  92C

  From:

  Lavester Limon, Manager, Office of Procurement

  Through:

  All construction and maintenance offices

  To:

  All construction and maintenance superintendents

  Attention:

  All job foremen

  Subject:

  Tool longevity, the promotion thereof

  Instant of Application:

  Immediate

  Duration of Relevance:

  Permanent

  Substance:

  At beginning of each shift all hand-tools shall be checked out of District 8892 Sewer Maintenance Warehouse. At close of each shift all hand-tools shall be carefully cleaned and returned to District 8892 Sewer Maintenance Warehouse.

  Directive reviewed and transmitted:Butry Keghorn, General Superintendent of Construction, Bureau of Sewer Construction

  Clyde Kaddo, Superintendent of Sewer Maintenance

  As Fedor Miskitman read the ‘Substance’ section, Luke expelled his breath in an incredulous snort. Miskitman finished, folded the sheet with careful movements of his thick fingers, looked at his watch. “That is the directive. We are twenty-five seconds over time; we must get back to work.”

  “Just a minute,” said Luke. “One or two things about that directive I want explained.”

  Miskitman turned his mild gaze upon Luke. “You did not understand it?”

  “Not altogether. Who does it apply to?”

  “It is an order for the entire gang.”

  “What do they mean ‘hand-tools’?”

  “These are tools which are held in the hands.”

  “Does that mean a shovel?”

  “A shovel?” Miskitman shrugged his burly shoulders. “A shovel is a hand-tool.”

  Luke asked in a voice of hushed wonder: “They want me to polish my shovel, carry it four miles to the warehouse, then pick it up tomorrow and carry it back here?”

  Miskitman unfolded the directive, held it at arm’s length, read with moving lips. “That is the order.” He refolded the paper, returned it to his pocket.

  Luke again feigned astonishment. “Certainly there’s a mistake.”

  “A mistake?” Miskitman was puzzled. “Why should there be a mistake?”

  “They can’t be serious,” said Luke. “It’s not only ridiculous, it’s peculiar.”

  “I do not know,” said Miskitman incuriously. “To work. We are late one minute and a half.”

  “I assume that all this cleaning and transportation is done on Organization time,” Luke suggested.

  Miskitman unfolded the directive, held it at arm’s length, read. “It does not say so. Our quota is not different.” He folded the directive, put it in his pocket.

  Luke spat on the rock floor. “I’ll bring my own shovel. Let ’em carry around their own precious hand-tools.”

  Miskitman scratched his chin, once more re-read the directive. He shook his head dubiously. “The order says that all hand-tools must be cleaned and taken to the warehouse. It does not say who owns the tools.”

  Luke could hardly speak for exasperation. “You know what I think of that directive?”

  Fedor Miskitman paid him no heed. “To work. We are over time.”

  “If I was general superintendent—” Luke began, but Miskitman rumbled roughly. “We do not earn perquisites by talking. To work. We are late.”

  The rotary cutter started up; seventy-two teeth snarled into gray-brown sandstone. Hopper jaws swallowed the chunks, passing them down an epiglottis into a feeder gut which evacuated far down the tunnel into lift-buckets. Stray chips rained upon the tunnel floor, which Luke Grogatch must scrape up and return into the hopper. Behind Luke two reinforcement men flung steel hoops into place, flash-welding them to longitudinal bars with quick pinches of the fingers, contact-plates in their gauntlets discharging the requisite gout of energy. Behind came the concrete-spray man, mix hissing out of his revolving spider, followed by two finishers, nervous men working with furious energy, stroking the concrete into a glossy polish. Fedor Miskitman marched back and forth, testing the reinforcement, gauging the thickness of the concrete, making frequent progress checks on the chart to the rear of the rotary cutter, where an electronic device traced the course of the tunnel, guiding it through the system of conduits, ducts, passages, pipes, tubes for water, air, gas, steam, transportation, freight and communication which knit the City into an Organized unit.

  The night shift ended at four o’clock in the morning. Miskitman made careful entries in his log; the concrete-spray man blew out his nozzles; the reinforcement workers removed their gauntlets, power packs and insulating garments. Luke Grogatch straightened, rubbed his sore back, stood glowering at the shovel. He felt
Miskitman’s ox-calm scrutiny. If he threw the shovel to the side of the tunnel as usual and marched off about his business, he would be guilty of Disorganized Conduct. The penalty, as Luke knew well, was declassification. Luke stared at the shovel, fuming with humiliation. Conform, or be declassified. Submit—or become a Junior Executive.

  Luke heaved a deep sigh. The shovel was clean enough; one or two swipes with a rag would remove the dust. But there was the ride by crowded man-belt to the warehouse, the queue at the window, the check-in, the added distance to his dormitory. Tomorrow the process must be repeated. Why the necessity for this added effort? Luke knew well enough. An obscure functionary somewhere along the chain of bureaus and commissions had been at a loss for a means to display his diligence. What better method than concern for valuable City property? Consequently the absurd directive, filtering down to Fedor Miskitman and ultimately Luke Grogatch, the victim. What joy to meet this obscure functionary face to face, to tweak his sniveling nose, to kick his craven rump along the corridors of his own office.

  Fedor Miskitman’s voice disturbed his reverie. “Clean your shovel. It is the end of the shift.”

  Luke made token resistance. “The shovel is clean,” he growled. “This is the most absurd antic I’ve ever been coerced into. If only I—”

  Fedor Miskitman, in a voice as calm and unhurried as a deep river, said, “If you do not like the policy, you should put a petition in the Suggestion Box. That is the privilege of all. Until the policy is changed you must conform. That is the way we live. That is Organization, and we are Organized men.”

  “Let me see that directive,” Luke barked. “I’ll get it changed. I’ll cram it down somebody’s throat. I’ll—”