by Jack Vance
Fritzen at last brought the music to a halt by means of a clever eight-bar coda. He grinned wolfishly down at the drummer, who returned a blank pop-eyed stare.
Only for a moment; Fritzen remembered his dignity and erased the smile before Trapp glancing benignly from the kitchen could notice.
Now, for want of better occupation, Fritzen scowled down at the marimba and began to adjust the blocks, all the while muttering, or, possibly, cursing under his breath. At last he was satisfied, and ran the mallets up and down the blocks, creating a fine flourish of sound. He set forth into a brave new tune at a loping tempo, issuing musical commands, then halting, while the drummer inserted ingenious whirligigs of thumping and bumping into the breaks.
So it went for twenty minutes, the marimba producing a soft blurred sound, dull notes without overmuch brilliance; with the drum, muffled and soft, creating unobtrusive thrust. One melody followed another: tunes wistful, pensive, tragic. There were no lively tunes: no jigs, merrihews, or whirlaways; no stomping, leg-kicking essays into the upper areas of musical verve.
Curious! thought Myron. He stopped one of the waiters. “Those are unusual musicians! Are they part of the regular staff?”
The waiter looked critically toward the platform. “Not the drummer; he’s a Klugash, from Gamma; he came around begging and Trapp thought that, being a savage, he might be able to work the drums. As for the marimba, Trapp’s grandmother sent away for instructions, then built the thing out of bits and pieces. But it only mouldered out in the shed until Trapp decided that his kitchen staff was overpaid and underworked. He took the scullions, pot-boys and skulkies aside; he told them that too long they had been dogging their work. From now on they must go out and play the marimba. They told him that they had no ear for music, but Trapp said he knew a trick worth two of that. He took his grandmother’s book of music and tore it apart, so that each lad received a section. Fritzen was allotted a collection of laments, tristes, mournful ballads and the like.” The waiter chuckled. “Fritzen runs in bad luck. Tonight, while scouring his leeks, he paused to blow his nose, and Trapp caught him out with a great roar, and Fritzen was sent off to the marimba.” The waiter, catching sight of Trapp, hurried off about his duties.
Ten minutes passed, then Myron became witness to another odd event. Three young women slipped into the annex through the back door. Keeping to the shadows, they approached the platform. Colored lights, flickering and dim, made their faces indistinct; Myron could see only that they were slight and slender, with dusky-brown skins and dark hair which fringed their foreheads and hung past their ears. From the waist up they were naked, save for small cups over their breasts; below the waist they wore skirts of fiber strings which rippled sinuously as they walked, to reveal their legs. They carried small guitars; unobtrusively, they stepped close to the side of the platform and began to pick out chords to the music in progress.
The tune ended. Fritzen looked down at the three girls without enthusiasm.
The girls struck an introductory sequence and began to sing softly, perhaps in an exotic dialect, so that their words were incomprehensible. But it made little difference; the spirit illuminating the music was clear. Fritzen listened, shrugged, and began to play a muted obligato. The voices were sweet and quiet; the girls sang songs of longing and homesickness for places unknown. They sang of fading memories and anguish too heavy to be borne.
Another surprise! In the shadows beside the platform appeared a shape wearing the costume of a wayfaring musician: a loose black cloak of flamboyant cut, a broad-brimmed slouch hat, tilted down over the face, already half-concealed by a pair of drooping black mustachios. He carried a concertina; seating himself on the platform beside the three girls he began to work the bellows of his instrument, finding his way by sighs and whispers into the music.
So the tune ended. The concertina player slid free of his cloak, to reveal a jacket of black velvet decorated with two panels of red and blue embroidery and silver buttons. He pulled the brim of his hat even lower, so that it almost met his swooping mustache. He drew four long chords from his instrument; the girls chanted a ballad so softly that the words were lost, though their tragic import was clear.
The music stopped and for a time nothing could be heard but the rush of the surf up and down the beach. Then once more, to the tinkle of guitar chords, the girls began to sing another slow sad song, yearning for something gone and irretrievably lost. The music slowed; the marimba became quiet; the voices sighed away, as if receding along the wind, and then became still. The music was finished.
Fritzen stepped down from the platform and went to sit in the shadows. The drummer jumped to the floor and trotted to the back door and disappeared. The musician in the black velvet jacket put down his instrument. He spoke a few words to Fritzen, then, from a table to the back he took a wide bowl, into which he dropped a handful of coins.
Aha! thought Myron; priming the pump, was he? Moncrief, had he been on hand, would have used the same trick without compunction. Into Myron’s mind came a sudden queer speculation. He studied the vagabond musician carefully. Could his surmise be accurate? Of course! There could be no doubt. The concertina-player, with the raffish hat and the jaunty mustachios, was none other than Moncrief the Mouse-rider!
A second startling thought entered Myron’s mind: what of the three dark-haired maidens? He turned to look, only to see them slipping out the back way. But no mistake! They could only be Flook, Pook and Snook in disguise! And what a disguise! It was enough to make a man’s head reel.
Moncrief carried his bowl from table to table, rattling the coins, at the same time conversing with the tourists from Sonc Town hotels, who found him picturesque. After an adequate gratuity had been placed in the bowl, he continued to the next table, and the next.
Finally the versatile mountebank arrived at Myron’s table. In a plaintive voice he spoke: “Sir, I am a musician born to the trade, and inured to hardship and fearful toil! Tonight I have given the best of my bent, so that all ears might be ravished with charm. It is a noble deed, and I will not refuse compensation. So now you may give from a full heart! Give without stint! Give of your many sols, with both hands and a soul full of gratitude.”
Myron tossed a sol into the bowl and Moncrief continued on his rounds.
Flook, Pook and Snook entered the verandah. The wigs were gone; the skin-tone had been rinsed away; they wore skirts and pullovers of white and blue. The alteration was total. They came to the table occupied by the group from the Glicca; Wingo and Schwatzendale gallantly found them chairs. Moncrief presently appeared, now wearing his usual garments.
Waiters from the inn brought a long table out to the beach and placed it near the fire. They surrounded the table with chairs, spread a cloth, set out bowls of green sauce, hunches of bread, platters of raw vegetables, plates and table utensils. Moncrief stepped down from the verandah, along with Flook, Pook and Snook. They took seats at the table, and in due course were joined by others from along the verandah, until the table was filled.
The waiters brought a plank to the grill and placed upon it the long parcel which had been cooking for over an hour. They carried the plank to the table, stripped away the leaves to reveal an enormous armored sea-worm a foot in diameter, eight feet long, fringed with twin rows of small jointed arms. The waiters cut away the forward proboscis and the frontal processes, as well as the terminal organs, from which exuded a yellow froth. They detached the jointed arms, then cut the carcass into vertical slices an inch thick, which were served to the diners with tongs. Within each slice was a layer of blood-red cells, like pomegranate seeds; the diners scraped these into bowls of sauce, then cut the slices and ate the pungent white flesh as they might devour slices from a watermelon, using the red kernels in the green sauce for a relish.
At midnight the group from the Glicca took lights and flares, both to illuminate the beach and to warn away the night-visioned flying creatures which often attacked men. Thus protected, the group returned to the sp
aceport and to the security of the Glicca.
In the morning a few more parcels of outbound cargo were loaded. The freight agent reported that there would be no more for a week. Captain Maloof immediately shifted the Glicca to Station B on Beta, near the town Felker’s Landing.
Chapter XI
Felker’s Landing was situated on the northern savannah of Beta, at the brink of the Great Gorge. The spaceport, at the eastern edge of town, also overlooked the gorge, at this point about five hundred feet wide and two hundred feet deep.
A mesh of fragile walkways — the so-called ‘sprangs’ — suspended from trusses extending over the Gorge, provided access to the kiki-nuts which grew on stalks rising from the swamp below.
Felker’s Landing had been founded in ancient times by a folk quite different from the current inhabitants. These were the Peregrine Fellows of the Phillippic Society, who had come to Mariah in order to create a community based upon rationality and harmony with nature. They intended to make logic and efficiency instinctive habits, as automatic as breathing. All structures would be built in the round, to avoid cracks and angles where dirt might collect. Every aspect of life was analyzed and simplified, so as to yield maximum effect for minimal exertion.
As the centuries and millennia passed the customs of Felker’s Landing altered until only the most tenuous continuity remained. The current conventions were even more rigorous than before; now, however, they were comprehensible only to the initiated. Distinctions of dress and color guided many phases of interpersonal relations, allowing a person to specify, in broad terms, the role he wished to play in the events of the day. A person disinclined for social contact might choose to wear a black headband, thereby shrouding himself in a mantle of invisibility. No one might notice him, and so he became unseen. At puberty men wore blue-fringed headbands and girls red-fringed headbands; thereafter, they were oblivious to each other save as sexless blurs. Marriages were arranged and at the conclusion of the ceremony the bride and groom removed the colored fringes from each other’s forehead, the presumption being that now, for the first time, they saw each other’s faces, and perhaps in many cases it was so. The act had strong erotic symbolism, being tantamount to breaking the maidenhead. The excitement affected everyone present. At the raising of the fringes, bride and groom were required to feign gladsome surprise, then dance a traditional dance symbolic of initiation into the erotic mysteries. Everyone enjoyed the occasion, approving a proper performance of the dance, criticizing incorrect postures, reminiscing as to other dancings.
The river Amer flowed down the center of Felker’s main boulevard, on its way to pour over the brink of the Great Gorge. The north bank was considered female, the south bank male. When men wished to visit the north bank they must clip small scarlet cockades to the bridge of their noses. The women similarly must fix tufts of blue hair to their cheeks when they visited the south bank, usually when they wished to patronize one of the three taverns: the Prospero, or the Black Tamber, or the Fazirab.
The Great Gorge, with its web of sprangs, dominated the life of the town. A dense growth of enormous black ferns choked the swamp. The fronds rose a hundred feet, with the central stalk pushing thirty feet higher, terminating in a spherical case six to eight feet in diameter. Pods sprouted from the surface like warts, each containing a cluster of the kiki-nuts, which had engaged epicurean appetites everywhere across the Reach.
The kiki-nuts, together with the tourist trade, nourished the economy of Felker’s Landing. The ferns could not be climbed from below to harvest the pods, by reason of poisonous insects inhabiting the fronds. Laminated poles penetrated the swamp at intervals; they were joined to narrow walkways, ‘sprangs’, connected to each other and to landings along the edge of the gorge, creating an intricate network. The sprangs were narrow and light, often no more than a foot or two wide, and supported mainly by catenary cables hanging from the trusses above. The men and women who ran along the sprangs, carrying baskets, were the ‘sprang-hoppers’. Over the centuries certain sprang-hoppers had become legends, through feats of agility, remarkable leaps; also for gallantry in connection with the dramatic duels which had occurred out along the sprangs, the loser toppling into the soft blue-green core of the ferns, to be swarmed over by foot-long insects.
The sprang-hoppers harvested the nut pods and carried them to the sheds. The pods were husked, the kiki-nuts extracted, cleaned, graded, and packed in casks for shipment to the civilized worlds.
The Glicca would remain in port for two, possibly three days, and the crew was given liberty to pursue its own inclinations.
When time allowed, Wingo sometimes set up a little market, where he would sell toys, pots, pans, cutlery, colored pencils and the like. The enterprise earned him no great profit, but he enjoyed dealing with the local folk, and his camera was always ready to capture a quaint ‘mood impression’. On these occasions, the better to project the romantic ambience of ancient artistic tradition, Wingo liked to wear his wide-brimmed brown hat, the brim set at a rakish angle; his sweeping brown cloak and expensive boots, custom-made to protect his sensitive feet.
During the afternoon following the Glicca’s arrival at Felker’s Landing, the crew tested the ales offered for sale by the Prospero Inn, and also the Black Tamber, and were favorably impressed. On the following day Wingo set up his booth near the entrance to the space terminal. Almost at once a small crowd of potential customers gathered to inspect his merchandise, so that Wingo was encouraged to hope for a profitable day. However, on this occasion Wingo’s hopes were not to be realized. Neither his artistic garments nor his stern demeanor dissuaded the Felks from acts of mischief. After approaching the booth and examining the stock, they moved away and slipped the black bands of invisibility over their foreheads. Now, assured that their misdeeds would go unnoticed, they returned to the booth and began to steal Wingo’s merchandise.
Wingo wrathfully cried out: “Come now! This must stop! I cannot allow such thievery!”
The protests went unheeded. Wingo quickly took several ‘mood photographs’ for his records, then began to squirt the perpetrators with bad-smelling tick repellent. The act aroused so much outrage that Wingo was forced to desist.
“Very well,” Wingo told the angry thieves. “Since you cannot behave like ladies and gentlemen, I regret that I must close the market. I am amazed to find petty dishonesty so rampant at Felker’s Landing!”
Wingo carried his stock back to the Glicca, then went off into the town. He sauntered along the edge of the Great Gorge, pausing now and then to photograph the sprangs and the agile sprang-hoppers. Across the river he noticed the Prospero Inn, a hostelry of three stories shaded under the black and green palps of six tall dendrons. Wingo crossed the Amer by one of the six bridges and investigated the premises of the Prospero, but found no sign of his shipmates. Returning to the boulevard, he set off toward the Black Tamber. Along the way he passed a side street with tall three-story houses to either side. One of these houses had been converted into a shop. A sign hung over the street:
MUSEUM OF THE NATURAL MAN
On display and for sale:
OBJECTS OF VIRTU. CURIOS.
ARTIFACTS ILLUSTRATIVE OF LORE AND RITUAL.
Professor Gill, Curator, is a savant of trans-galactic reputation. He is currently showing a collection of objects odd, arcane, and often imbued with mystery. Serious collectors are welcome. Faddists, dabblers and casual tourists, please pass on. We have no time to waste.
Wingo entered the shop. At the back sat a small man with a pinched pale face, a few untidy locks of gray hair, eyebrows raised in chronic annoyance. He wore a threadbare black coat, tight trousers of snuff-brown velvet, pointed black shoes of a style long outmoded. A large leather-bound book lay open on the table before him; as he read, he tapped quick flurries upon the keys of a coding machine. Wingo waited a polite moment, then began to look about the shop. A row of tables supported trays heaped with miscellaneous oddments; shelves along the walls displayed a similar
clutter.
With ponderous deliberation Professor Gill put aside the ledger and gave his attention to Wingo. He said crisply, “I specialize in materials to interest only the serious student. Tourist shops are along the main street. Let me advise you: wear a green and white mercantilist’s ribbon before you attempt to deal with the local shopkeepers; otherwise they will cheat you without remorse.”
“That is good advice!” said Wingo gratefully. “Where can I obtain such a ribbon?”
“As it happens, I have a stock of such ribbons on hand. All are of high quality, but I suppose I can spare one of the lesser value.”
“It will serve me well enough,” said Wingo. “What is the price?”
“Ninety-two sols,” said Professor Gill quickly.
Wingo blinked. “I will give the matter thought.”
“As you like.” Before Gill could return to his book, Wingo asked, “You are a native of the town?”
Professor Gill shot Wingo a scornful glance. “In no manner, shape, form or degree! Surely this is obvious?”
Wingo hurriedly apologized. “Of course; it is quite clear! I spoke without thinking!”
Professor Gill was not to be mollified so easily. “I am a pure cosmopolitan! I hold degrees from six universities and my publications are seminal. As soon as my treatise is documented, I shall be gone from here in the blink of an eye! Meanwhile —” he made a curt gesture “— you are at liberty to examine the items on display.”
Wingo asked ingenuously, “These are artifacts of the early sprang-hoppers, or so I assume?”
Professor Gill spoke with studied patience. “Some of the material is Felker. Rather more is Klugash.”
Wingo started to speak, but Gill held up his hand. “I lack the time to chat with you about the Klugash.”
Wingo spoke with dignity. “I only wished to mention that I saw one of this sort a day or two ago, at Songerl Bay. It was small, freakish, with a little round belly and long thin legs. It seemed inoffensive enough.”
