The Green Pearl

by Jack Vance

  Visbhume held up his hand. "No, no! I know all there is to be known of clever young ladies who say ‘yes' when they mean ‘no' and ‘no' when they mean ‘Visbhume, please and by all means!' I wish to talk here, where candor will make you my absolute favorite, and will not that be a pleasant treat? Come now, sit; I enjoy the sense of your delectable presence!"

  "Sir Visbhume, I prefer to stand. Tell me what you wish to know."

  "I am curious as to Prince Dhrun and his early youth. It would seem that he is quite old in years for so young a father,"

  "Sir, the folk concerned might not wish me to gossip at wholesale with strangers."

  "But I am not a stranger! I am Visbhume, and much attracted by your fresh young beauty! Here on Tanjecterly there are none to cavil and none to glare and none to cry out ‘impudicity!' We can indulge ourselves in the most daring of intimacies... . But ah, I have perhaps hinted at too much! Think only of my search for truth! I need but a few facts to ease my curiosity. Tell me, my dear! Tell me, do!"

  Glyneth tried to seem casual. "Better that we return to Watershade, you and I! There you may put questions to Dhrun himself, and he will surely give you a gracious response. You will gain my good opinion, and I will know no guilt."

  Visbhume chuckled. "Guilt, my dear? Never! Come closer to me; I would caress your glossy hair, with perhaps a kiss for your reward."

  Glyneth drew back a step. Visbhume's evident intent was bad news indeed, since, if he misused her, he would not dare liberate her for fear that she would carry tales. In such a case her only protection lay in denying him the information he sought.

  Visbhume watched her sidelong, smiling like a fox, as if he were able to read the flow of her thoughts. He said: "Glyneth, I am a person who dances to a merry tune! Still, sometimes I must, by necessity and rightness, tread to a more portentous strain. I dislike excesses where events go wildly awry and affectionate trust is forever shattered. Do you apprehend my meaning?"

  "You want me to obey you, and you promise me harm if I will not."

  Visbhume chuckled. "That is blunt and direct; the music to these words is not pretty. Still—"

  "Sir Visbhume, I care not a twig for your music. I must also tell you that unless you in all courtesy allow me to leave this place, you will answer to King Aillas, and this is as sure as the sun rises and sets."

  "King Aillas? Oh la! The suns of Tanjecterly neither rise nor set; they curvet in graceful rounds about the sky. Now then! The fabric of our love is not yet rent! Tell me what I wish to know—after all, it is no great thing—or I must compel you to a sweet obedience. I will show you, so that you will know my power. Watch!"

  Visbhume went to a nearby hedge and plucked a flower of twenty pink and white petals. "See this bloom? Is it not dainty and innocent? See how I do." Visbhume pushed his long thin white fingers from the black sleeves and, petal by petal, pulled the flower apart, with each petal smiling up at Glyneth, who watched with dread growing large in her mind.

  Visbhume tossed away the dead flower. "By this means I have taken a richness into my soul. But it is only a taste, when I would dine full. Watch!"

  Visbhume rummaged through his wallet and found a little silver whistle. Going once more to the hedge, he blew on the pipe. Glyneth stared to where a sheath sewed to the side of the wallet showed the haft of a little stiletto. She moved a step toward the wallet, but Visbhume had turned so that her movements were under his gaze.

  A bird with a blue-crested head flew to the hedge to hear Visbhume's piping. With nimble white fingers Visbhume played flourishes, trills and wild little arpeggios, and the bird cocked its head askance to hear such mad and wonderful notes.

  Glyneth, through fairy magic, had been gifted with the language of all things, and she cried out to the bird: "Fly! He means you harm!"

  The bird chirped uneasily, but Visbhume had seized it, and carried it back to the bench. "Now, my dear, watch! And remember, everything I do has its reason."

  While Glyneth watched aghast, Visbhume performed atrocious deeds upon the bird, and finally let the tattered thing drop to the ground. He wiped his fingers fastidiously upon a tuft of grass, and smiled at Glyneth. "Such are the ways in which my blood is stirred, and a sweet savor is added to our knowledge of one another. So come closer, sweet Glyneth, I am ready to caress your warm person."

  Glyneth took a deep breath and twisted her face into the caricature of a smile. Slowly she came toward Visbhume, who crowed in delight. "Ah, sweet, sweet, sweet! You come like a dear maiden should!" He reached out his arms; Glyneth shoved him smartly on the narrow chest and sent him stumbling backward, mouth pursed in a purple O of astonishment. Glyneth seized the wallet, and drew the stiletto. As Visbhume staggered back toward her she struck out. Her arm was deflected; the stiletto plunged through Visbhume's left cheek, across his mouth and out his right cheek. The stiletto, of magic properties, could not be withdrawn save by the hand which had thrust it. Visbhume gave a crazy chortling cry of pain and whirled in a circle; Glyneth seized his wallet and ran at full speed down the slope to the river. A hundred yards downstream she spied the dock. Visbhume came bounding after her, the stiletto yet protruding from his cheek.

  Glyneth ran to the dock and jumped into the boat. The fisherman who dug in the mud along the shore cried out in anger: "Halt! Do not molest my boat! Away with you and your tricks!"

  The language was strange, but her sleight of tongues allowed Glyneth complete understanding; nevertheless, she cast off the line and pushed out into the river just as Visbhume came running out on the dock. He stood waving his arms and trying to call, but the stiletto impeded his tongue, and his words were barely comprehensible: "... my wallet!... Glyneth! Come back; you do not know what you do! ... the holes to our world, we will never return!"

  Glyneth looked for oars, but found none. The boat was caught in the current and swept off downstream, with Visbhume bounding along the bank, uttering strangled orders and pleas, until he was halted by the influx of a second river, so that he was obliged to stop and watch Glyneth, in her boat, float beyond his reach of vision, along with his wallet.

  Presently Visbhume came upon a ferry operated by a pair of lumpish men, who demanded coin before they would convey him across the river. Visbhume, lacking coin, was compelled to surrender the silver buckle from his shoe for the passage.

  At the ferry terminus Visbhume discovered a blacksmith shop. Upon payment of the remaining buckle, the smith sawed the handle from the shaft; then, while Visbhume shrieked in pain, he seized the tip with a pincers and pulled the blade out through Visbhume's right cheek.

  From a pocket in his voluminous sleeve, Visbhume brought a round white box. He removed the top and shook out a tablet of waxy yellow balm. With sighs and exclamations of gratification he rubbed the balm on his wounds, easing his pain and healing the cuts. He returned balm into box and box into the pocket in his sleeve; the pieces of stiletto he dropped into a pocket in the side of his trousers, and once more set off in pursuit of Glyneth.

  At length Visbhume reached the shore of the main river. The surface of the water lay blank; the boat had drifted far out of sight.

  II

  THE BOAT FLOATED ALONG THE RIVER, with the banks sliding by at either side. Glyneth sat rigidly fearful that somehow the boat might rock and pitch her into the dark deep water, and Glyneth thought that she would not like to explore the depths of this river. She looked sadly over her shoulder; with every instant she floated farther from the hut and passage back the way she had come. She told herself: "My friends will help me!" No matter what the circumstances, she must cling to this conviction—because she knew it was true.

  Another dismal idea: what if she became hungry and thirsty? Dare she eat and drink the substances of Tanjecterly? More than likely they would poison her. In her mind's-eye she saw herself eating a morsel of fruit, and instantly choking, then turning black and swelling into a disgusting parody of herself.

  "I must stop thinking such things!" she told herself resolutely. "Ai
llas will help me as soon as he finds that I am lost, and Shimrod as well, and of course my dear Dhrun... . The sooner the better, for this is a dreadful place!"

  Spherical trees with foliage of red and blue and blue-black lined the banks. On several occasions Glyneth saw beasts at the river's edge: a white bull with the head of an insect and spikes along his back; a spindly stilt-man fifteen feet tall with a narrow neck and a sharp face adapted to looking into foliage for nuts and fruit.

  Glyneth explored the contents of the wallet. She found a book bound in leather entitled Twitten's Almanac, evidently newly copied from an older work. She found a small bottle of wine and a little box containing a hunch of bread and a slab of cheese. Those were Visbhume's rations, and Glyneth surmised that both bottle and case were magically refilled after use. She noticed other articles whose utility was not so clear, including a half-dozen small glass bulbs swarming inside with insects.

  Glyneth, in the absence of Visbhume, began to feel less desperate. Sooner or later her friends would find her, and bring her home; of this she felt sure... . Why should Visbhume so insistently inquire upon the circumstances of Dhrun's birth? He could only be acting in the interests of King Casmir, and hence disclosure of the knowledge most probably would not be to the advantage of Dhrun.

  The boat drifted into marshy shallows. Glyneth reached into the water and secured a floating branch, which she used to pole herself to the shore. She climbed the bank and searched upriver, but discovered no sign of Visbhume. She turned to look downriver and discovered a line of stony crags descending from a high ridge, at last to thrust into the water. Glyneth eyed these crags with distrust, speculating that they might be the haunt of ferocious beasts. The boat and the squat person in the wide brown hat, digging in the mud, indicated the existence of a human population—but where? And what sort of human beings?

  Glyneth stood on the shore, dubiously considering the landscape: a woeful figure in a pretty blue frock. Conceivably all the best magic of Shimrod might not be able to find her, and she would spend all the days of her life under the green and yellow suns of Tanjecterly—unless Visbhume came upon her and hypnotized her with his silver pipe.

  She blinked away her tears. As her first urgency she must find a refuge secure from Visbhume.

  The crags which came down to the river intrigued her. If she climbed to the near ridge she could overlook a great sweep of country and perhaps discover a human settlement. The idea was not without its dreary possibilities! Strangers were not everywhere accorded kind hospitality, not even among the lands of Earth.

  So Glyneth hesitated and wondered how best to survive. The boat offered a measure of security and she was reluctant to leave it behind.

  Her indecision was suddenly vacated. From the water rose a sinewy member, as wide as her own waist, ending with a wedge-shaped head, a single green eye and a great fanged mouth. The eye fixed upon her; the mouth gaped wide, showing a dark red interior; the head lunged forward, but Glyneth had already jumped back.

  The head and neck slowly subsided into the river. Shuddering, Glyneth backed away from the boat, which no longer seemed a source of security... . Well, then: up to the ridge.

  She broke away twigs from her branch, so that it might be used as a club, or a staff, or a makeshift lance. Throwing the strap to Visbhume's wallet over her shoulder, she set out as bravely as possible downstream along the riverbank toward the crags.

  Without incident she arrived at the base of the crags and climbed the first rise of ground. Here she paused to catch her breath and, looking back the way she had come, with dismay thought to see a far bounding black form: almost certainly Visbhume.

  The rocks were close at hand, where she could possibly find a hiding place. She climbed up a slope among hummocks of curiously convoluted stones. ... As she passed among them, they abruptly uncoiled and jerked erect.

  Glyneth gasped in terror; she was surrounded by tall thin creatures gray as stone, with tall pointed heads. Eyes like disks of black glass and long leathery nasal flaps produced an effect of droll dejection, by no means reassuring, especially when one of the group dropped a cord over Glyneth's neck and led her away at a scuttling trot along a trail through the rocks.

  Ten minutes later the group came out upon a flat area with crags rising steep at the back. The goblin-eels thrust Glyneth into a pen also occupied by a rotund six-legged creature with a dull pink body surmounted by an object like an enormous orange polyp, fringed by a hundred eyes growing on stalks. The eyes veered around to peer at Glyneth, who was now in a state beyond terror, with her emotions anaesthetized. ... Unreal. She closed her eyes and opened them again. Nothing had changed.

  The walls of the pen were woven of branches, in a rude and untidy style. Glyneth stealthily tested the tightness of the weave and decided that without too much effort she could open a hole large enough to permit her passage. She watched the goblin-eels for a moment, wondering what might be the best time to attempt an escape. At the moment the group stood assembled around a pit in the stone, with an opening about four feet in diameter, from which exuded wisps of vapor, or steam.

  Several of the goblin-eels stirred the substance in the pit with longhandled paddles. Occasionally one or another touched the stuff on the paddles and tasted it with the nice judgment of connoisseurs. Conversing in whispers, they arrived at a consensus. Several entered the pen and deftly chopped two legs from the pink beast. Ignoring its squeals of pain as it hobbled to the side of the pen the goblin-eels dropped the legs into the pit. Others tossed a bale of vegetation into the steaming vent. A black shrimplike creature, which roared and bellowed and strove mightily against its bonds, was also dragged to the opening and thrown in. Its cries reached a crescendo of roaring, then subsided into plaintive gurgling, dwindled and went silent.

  Eyes doleful and droll were now turned toward Glyneth, and tears at last coursed down her cheeks. "How dreadful and dreary that I must die in this vile pit, when I do not want to do so, not in the least!"

  A shrill wild sound came from the trail: the fluting and warbling of Visbhume's silver whistle. The goblin-eels became still, then turned and gave signals of perturbation.

  Visbhume appeared, marching smartly to the meter of his music, with an occasional caper of sheer extravagance, when he struck some phrase he considered particularly felicitous.

  The goblin-eels began shaking and jerking, as if impelled despite all inclination, and began to hop up and down, in place, while Visbhume played fiery jigs and fare-thee-wells. At last he halted, and cried out in a reedy voice a language Glyneth knew to be that of the goblin-eels: "Who is master here, lord of the irresistible tap-tap-a-tapping?"

  All whispered: "It is you, it is you! The Progressive Eels are your minions! Put down your fearful weapon; must we hop and jump to exhaustion?"

  "I will show you my mercy, but first, one last little quickstep, for your health's sake, and so that you remember me the better!"

  "Spare us!" cried those who had termed themselves the Progressive Eels. "Come; taste the good slime of our pit!" And: "Put away your magic; eat slime!"

  Glyneth had been thrusting at the weave of the pen; she created a hole and squeezed through. "Now! Away, be away! Run, run, run!"

  Visbhume pointed: "I will desist, and I will take away with me that creature who even now thinks to escape the pen. Seize her, and bring her to me."

  The Progressive Eels leapt to surround Glyneth, and one seized her hair. A heavy stone, larger than a pair of clenched fists, hissed down to strike the Progressive Eel's face and crush it to instant pulp.

  Stones rattled down the mountainside; Glyneth jerked around in a state close to hysteria; she was not soothed by the silhouette of what appeared to be a monstrous half-human beast, black against the lavender sky. The creature stood a moment, appraising the scene below, then lunged down the rocks with what seemed a total contempt for gravity: bounding, running, sliding, and at last leaping into the midst of the Progressive Eels. It snatched a sword from the scabbard at
its leather belt, and with furious zeal set about hacking and chopping. Glyneth shrank back, appalled by the frightful sounds which rose from the combat. Heads with eyes wide in blank surprise rolled along the ground; torsos half-severed fell down, to crawl about with foolish kicks, usually to tumble into the pit.

  Hissing and sighing, the Progressive Eels ran off into the rocks, despite Visbhume's raging commands. At last he blew a great blast on his pipe which brought the eels to a sudden halt.

  Visbhume screamed: "Stand fast! Attack this footling beast, with full force, from all directions! It will cringe before your onslaught!"

  The Progressive Eels considered the scene of carnage with large blank eyes. Visbhume exhorted them again: "Strike great blows! Hurl stones and hurtful objects, or even nauseous refuse! Take up spears; stab the thing through and through!"

  Certain of the eels heeded the instructions and picked up rocks to throw, but Visbhume's wrath was not yet appeased. He cried: "Attack! Capture! Marshal the battle-worms! To action, all!"

  The man-beast wiped its sword on a corpse and showed Glyneth a grimace of drawn lips and white teeth somewhat difficult to interpret. Shrinking back, she stumbled and started to slide into the pit, but the creature seized her arm and pulled her to safety. Glyneth stared wildly around the landscape, seeking an easy route away from this dreadful place; from the corner of her eye she glimpsed the downward trajectory of a great stone. She lurched aside, and the stone crashed to the surface where she had stood. Another stone slanted down to strike the man-beast's shoulder; he spun around roaring in rage, but chose not to attack. He slung Glyneth over his shoulder and bounded away up the mountainside.

  Visbhume set up an instant scream of indignation. "You are taking my wallet, my personal property! Drop it at once! Theft is a crime! The wallet is mine alone, with my valuable things!"

  Glyneth only clutched the wallet more closely, and was whisked up the slope at a speed which made her dizzy.

  The creature at last halted and swung Glyneth to the ground.