The Potter of Firsk and Other Stories

by Jack Vance

  He ate his lunch in an adjoining cafeteria. The food was passable—precooked on Earth, served in sealed trays. Returning toward his post at Eviscerator No. 4 he noted a doorway leading out on a plank walk.

  Magnus Ridolph paused, stepped outside. The walk, supported on piles driven into the morass, ran the length of the plant. Magnus Ridolph turned toward the ocean, hoping to catch a glimpse of the cannery’s fishing fleet.

  The mist had lifted somewhat, revealing endless miles of reed-covered mud-flats and a stagnant sea. The land proper was distinguishable from the mud-flats only by an occasional cycad which showed a dull frond to the great somber sun. It was a landscape bleak and inexpressibly dreary, a world without hope or joy.

  Magnus Ridolph rounded the corner of the plant, came upon the concentration pond from which the fish were channeled to the eviscerators. He looked right and left but—except for a neat aluminum dinghy—not a boat of any sort was visible. How then was the cannery supplied with fish?

  He turned his attention to the concentration pond, a shallow concrete basin, fifty feet by twenty, with a break in the wall facing the sea three feet square. Magnus Ridolph, stepping closer, saw that a set of long transparent bristles pointed through the opening, permitting fish to swim in, but preventing their escape.

  And as he watched, the dull surface of the ocean rippled. He caught the sheen of a thousand small fins, and into the basin darted first one fish, then a hundred, then a thousand and further thousands until the basin seethed and spattered with concentrated life.

  Magnus Ridolph felt eyes on him. Lifting his head he saw standing across the pond the broad-shouldered young man with the long yellow face. He wore puttees, high field boots of nulastic, a tan jacket, and now he came striding around the pond toward Magnus Ridolph.

  “You supposed to be out here? Or at work?”

  “I am employed, yes,” said Magnus Ridolph mildly. “I supervise a—” he coughed “—an eviscerator. But now, I have only just finished my lunch.”

  The young man’s mouth curled. “The whistle blew half an hour ago. Get in motion, Pop, because we didn’t bring you three light-years out here to see the sights.”

  “If, as you say, the whistle has blown, I shall certainly return to my duties. Er—whom have I the pleasure of addressing?”

  “My name’s Donnels. I sign your check.”

  “Ah, yes. I see,” said Magnus Ridolph, nodding. He thoughtfully returned to the eviscerator.

  His duties were light but monotonous. Open the gate, shut it; open the gate, shut it—occasionally break up a jam of frantic silvery bodies in front of the segregators. Magnus Ridolph found ample time for reflection.

  An explanation for the mysterious adulterations seemed as far away as ever. The man who could accomplish the mischief most easily was George Donnels but so far as Magnus Ridolph could see, the plant seemed completely efficient. True, Donnels wanted to buy out Karamor’s interest but why should he endanger the reputation of his own product?

  Especially when he had such admirable raw material—for the fish, so Magnus Ridolph noted, were larger and more plump than the specimens displayed by his Mnemiphot. Evidently conditions on Chandaria agreed with them or possibly Donnels had stocked the world with only the most select fish.

  Open the gate, close it. And he noted that the surge of fish down the chute formed a recurring pattern. First one fish—rather larger, this one, perhaps the leader of the shoal—then the thousands, dashing helter-skelter after him into the knives. There was never any hesitation. The instant the gate opened, in surged the shoal-leader, followed by the eager thousands.

  The races most numerously represented at the cannery were the Banshoos, Capellan anthropoids, men and Cordovan toricles, in that order. Each had its separate bunkhouse and mess-hall—though bunkhouse was perhaps a misnomer for the tanks of warm broth in which the Banshoos wallowed, or the airtight barracks of the Capellans.

  After a shower and his evening meal, Magnus Ridolph wandered into the recreation room. The telescreen was for the moment lifeless and a pair of card games were in progress. Magnus Ridolph took a seat beside a stocky bald man with plump cheeks and little blue pig-eyes, who was reading the afternoon news-facsimile.

  After a moment he laid the sheet to the side, stretched pudgy arms, belched. Magnus Ridolph with grave courtesy offered him a cigarette.

  “Thanks, don’t mind if I do,” said the stocky man cheerfully.

  “Rather dull isn’t it?” said Magnus Ridolph.

  “Sure is,” and his new friend blew a plume of smoke into the already hazy atmosphere. “Think I’ll take outa this jungle next ship.”

  “You’d think the company would provide better recreation facilities,” said Magnus Ridolph.

  “Oh, they don’t care for anything but making money. These are the worst conditions I’ve ever worked in. Bare union minimum, no extras at all, whatever.”

  “A matter has been puzzling me—” began Magnus Ridolph.

  “Lots of stuff puzzling me,” sniffed his friend.

  “How are the fish supplied to the cannery?”

  “Oh,” the man exhaled a wise cloud of smoke, “they’re supposed to have bait in that pond. There’s so many fish and they’re so hungry they bite for anything. Donnels sure saves that way—gets the fish free, so to speak. Don’t cost him a cent, far’s I can see.”

  “And where does Donnels live?” inquired Magnus Ridolph.

  “He’s got him a nice little cabin over behind the laboratory.”

  “Oh—the laboratory,” mused the white-bearded sage. “And where is the laboratory? I hadn’t noticed it.”

  “She’s off along the trail a little ways, down the shore.”

  “I see.”

  Magnus Ridolph presently rose to his feet and wandered around the room a moment or so. Then he slipped out into the night.

  Chandaria had no moons and a heavy mist shrouded the face of the planet from the stars. Ten steps took Magnus Ridolph into utter darkness. He switched on his pocket flash, picked his way gingerly over the soggy ground, at last came upon the trail to the laboratory—a graveled path, dry and solid.

  Once fairly on the path he doused the flash, halted, strained his ears for sound. He heard a far waver of voices from the direction of the cannery, a phonograph faintly squeaking Capellan music.

  He continued along the path, guiding himself by the feel of the gravel, stopping often to listen. He walked an interminable time, through blackness so dense that it seemed to stream back from his face as he walked. Suddenly a row of lighted windows glowed through the fog. Magnus Ridolph moved as close as feasible to one of these windows, stood on his tiptoes, stared.

  He was looking into a room equipped as a biological laboratory. Donnels and a slight dark man in a white smock stood talking beside a coffin-shaped crate.

  As he watched, Donnels took a pair of cutters, snapped the bands of metal tape binding the crate. The fiber sides fell away, wadding was torn aside, and now a factory-new diving-suit stood revealed—a semi-rigid shell with a transparent dome, oxygen generator and propulsion unit.

  Donnels kicked aside the rubbish, stood viewing the gear with evident satisfaction. Magnus Ridolph strained to catch a word of the conversation. Impossible—the window was insul-glass. He trotted to the door, inched it open.

  “—ought to be a good outfit, four hundred and fifty munits worth,” came Donnels’ flat voice.

  “The question is—is it what we need?”

  “Sure.” Donnels sounded confident, cocksure. “There’s no current to speak of. In five minutes I can circle the colony, and before they know what’s going on, the stessonite will kill ’em off like flies.”

  “Ha, hmph,” the technician coughed. “They’ll see you coming—ha, hmph—just as when you tried to blast them.”

  “Curse it, Naile,” crowed Donnels, “you’re a pessimist! I’ll come in along the bottom. They won’t see the suit like they did the boat. The suit can hit as fast as they can
swim; no chance of word getting on ahead. Well, we’ll try anyway. No harm trying. How’re your pupils coming along?”

  “Good, very good indeed. Two in D tank are ready for the fifth chart and in H tank—that big fellow—he’s into the eighth chart.”

  Magnus Ridolph straightened slightly, then bent closer. “The Barnett Method?” He heard Donnels’ voice. “And how about that fellow—in the tank by himself?”

  “Ah,” said Naile, “that’s the wise one! Sometimes I think he knows more than I do.”

  “That’s the boy that’ll make millionaires out of both of us,” said Donnels, a singing lilt in his voice. “Provided I can buy out Karamor.”

  There was a silence. Then Magnus Ridolph heard a faint movement of feet. He ducked back to the window, in time to see Donnels’ broad-shouldered figure leaving the laboratory.

  Naile came obliquely toward him, bent forward with mouth loosely open, staring at an object out of Magnus Ridolph’s vision. Magnus Ridolph chewed his lip, fingered his beard. Hypotheses formed in his mind, only to be defeated by their eventual implications. Naile left the room through a door at the rear. Evidently he had his quarters in an annex to the laboratory.

  Magnus Ridolph stirred himself. Further information must be collected. He marched to the door and, almost insolently casual, entered the laboratory.

  Standard equipment—permobeam projector and viewer, radio-activator, microscopes—visual and quantumnal—balances, automatic dissectors, gene calibrators, mutation cradles. These he dismissed with a glance. At his shoulder stood the diving-suit. First things first, thought Magnus Ridolph. He inspected the suit with appreciation.

  “Excellent apparatus,” he said to himself. “Admirable design, conscientious workmanship. A shame to defeat the purpose of so much effort.” He shrugged, reached inside, and detached the head of the seam-sealer—a small precisely-machined bit of metal, without which the suit could not be made water-tight.

  Movement flickered across the room. Naile! Magnus Ridolph quietly stepped toward the door. The motion caught the technician’s eye.

  “Hey!” he cried. “What are you up to?” He bounded forward. “Come back here!” But Magnus Ridolph was away into the Chandaria night.

  A beam of light tore a milky rent through the fog, rested a moment on Magnus Ridolph.

  “You!” roared Naile. For so slight a man, thought Magnus Ridolph, his voice was remarkably powerful. He heard the thud of Naile’s feet. The man also appeared to be agile, swift.

  Magnus Ridolph groaned once, then—as the thud of feet grew louder—he jumped off the path into the swamp.

  He sank to his knees in cool slime, crouched, threw himself prone. The beam of Naile’s flash passed over his head, the steps pounded past. Darkness returned.

  Magnus Ridolph struggled through the muck back to the path, proceeded cautiously.

  The mist wandered away, vague as a sleepwalker. Magnus Ridolph saw the lights of his bunkhouse, a hundred yards distant. But as he watched they were obscured by something prowling the road in front. Naile?

  Magnus Ridolph turned, trotted as fast as his old legs would carry him, skirted far around to the left. Then he closed in to the rear of the bunkhouse. He made directly for the washroom, showered, rinsed out his clothes.

  Returning to the recreation hall he found the stocky bald man sitting exactly where he had left him an hour previously.

  Magnus Ridolph took a seat. “I understand,” he said, “that Donnels was blasting out in the ocean.”

  The plump man guffawed. “Yes, sir, he surely was. What in the Lord’s name for, I’m sure I can’t tell you. Sometimes I think he’s—well, he flies off the handle, like. A little excitable.”

  “Possibly he wished to kill some fish?” suggested Magnus Ridolph.

  His friend shrugged, pushed plump lips out around his pipe-stem. “With hundreds of tons of fish swarming of their own free will into his cannery he wants to go out and kill more? I hardly think so. Unless he’s crazier’n I think.”

  “Just where was he blasting?”

  His friend darted him a glance from little blue pig-eyes. “Well, I’ll tell you—though I don’t see what difference it makes. He was right off the point of land that sticks into the ocean—the one with the three tall trees on it. About a mile down the shore.”

  “Strange,” mused Magnus Ridolph. He pulled the small metal part from his pocket, fingering it thoughtfully. “Strange.” Sardines flinging themselves headlong into cans—Donnels and Naile applying the Barnett Method to something in a tank—Donnels blasting, poisoning something in the ocean—and, too, the adulteration of the canned sardines…

  He reported to work at the eviscerator with a theory looming vague at the portals of his mind, like one of the fern trees through the Chandaria mist. He bent over the chute, eyes under the frosty eyebrows sparking with as much excitement as he ever permitted himself.

  Open the gate—the surge of fish. Close the gate. Open the gate—the chute running thick with glinting silver crescents. Close the gate. Open the gate—the fish, first one, then the ranks behind. Close the gate.

  Magnus Ridolph noted that always a lone sardine led the way down the chute, a swarm of followers close on his tail. And peering after them into the bowels of the eviscerator Magnus Ridolph noticed an inconspicuous side-channel into which the first fish ducked while his fellows poured on to their deaths.

  Magnus Ridolph thoughtfully found a rag, reached far down, wadded shut the side-channel. Open the gate. The lead fish plunged down the chute—after him came the blind finny horde. He reached the side-channel, butted the rag frantically. The thrust of the others caught him. With desperate flapping of tail, he vanished into the knives. Close the gate. Open the gate. And the lead fish, thwarted in his escape by the wadded rag, was carried to death by his fellows.

  Six times the sequence was repeated. Then, when Magnus Ridolph opened the gate, there was no rush of fish. He reached down, removed the rag, sat peering with an innocent eye up the chute.

  A foreman presently bustled forward. “What’s the trouble? What’s wrong up here?”

  “The fish evidently have learned the danger of the chute,” said Magnus Ridolph. The foreman gave him a scornful glance. “Keep working the gate.” He turned away.

  Ten minutes later, when Magnus Ridolph opened the gate, fish poured down the chute as before. The foreman came to watch a moment, assured himself that the fish were running as usual, then departed. Magnus Ridolph replaced the rag in the side-passage. Six operations later the opened gate again drew blank. Magnus Ridolph immediately pulled out the rag.

  The foreman came on the run. Magnus Ridolph shook his head ruefully, framed an apologetic smile behind his beard.

  “We can’t have this—we can’t have this!” bawled the foreman. “What’s going on here?”

  He ran off, came back with a rock-eyed Donnels.

  Donnels peered down the chute, felt into the side escape. He drew back, straightened, glanced sharply at Magnus Ridolph, who blandly returned the gaze.

  “Throw another unit into the tank,” said Donnels to the foreman. “Keep an eye on ’em. See what’s happening.”

  “Yes, sir.” The foreman hurried off.

  Donnels turned to Magnus Ridolph, his long yellow face set hard, his mouth pulled far down at the corners.

  “You come out on the last ship?”

  “Why, yes,” said Magnus Ridolph. “A dismal voyage. The quarters were cramped, the food was miserable.”

  The thin mouth quivered. “Where did you sign up?”

  “On Rhodope. I remember it perfectly, it was—”

  “Fine, fine,” said Donnels. After a short pause: “You look like a pretty smart man.”

  “Ahr, ahem,” said Magnus Ridolph. “Are you suggesting a promotion? I’d be delighted to have a more responsible position, something clerical perhaps.”

  “If you’re smart,” said Donnels in an edged even tone, “you’ll keep your mind on your work—and noth
ing else.”

  “Just as you say,” said Magnus Ridolph with dignity.

  The foreman returned. Donnels signaled Magnus Ridolph to raise the gate and fish once more flushed the chute.

  Donnels stood close at hand for twenty minutes and the foreman remained ten minutes after Donnels had stalked away.

  The rest of the shift Magnus Ridolph performed his duties well and skillfully—though by way of diversion he found it amusing to reach down and cuff the Judas fish as it passed, until at last the fish learned to keep to the far side of the chute. Magnus Ridolph could pursue his sport only with inconvenient exertion and so desisted.

  Magnus Ridolph sat on the clammy bench before the bunkhouse, looking out over the landscape. There was little to see. Low in the sky hung the giant red sun, fitfully obscured by the shifting vapors. Ahead stretched the mud-flats and the leaden ocean, to his left rose the cannery and the warehouse. To his right the laboratory was visible, two hundred yards down the gravel path.

  Magnus Ridolph reached for a cigar, then remembered that he had packed none in his meager luggage—and the brand sold at the commissary offended rather than soothed his palate.

  Movement at the laboratory. Magnus Ridolph sat straighter on the bench. Donnels and Naile emerged, followed by two Capellan laborers, carrying the diving-suit.

  Magnus Ridolph pursed his lips. Evidently the absence of the seam-sealer had not been discovered.

  He watched impassively as the party turned toward the cannery wharf—Donnels darted him a long level stare as he strode by.

  As soon as the group had passed Magnus Ridolph rose, jauntily set off down the path toward the laboratory. He found the door unlocked and, entering, turned directly to the wall which had been out of his vision when he stood at the window.

  Tanks lined the wall, tanks full of fish—sardines. Some swam placidly to and fro, others hung close to the glass, staring out with intent eyes. Magnus Ridolph became aware of differences.

  Some had monstrous tails, lizard-like heads. Others resembled tadpoles, with rudimentary fins and tail barely moving hyper-developed crania. Eyes bulged at Magnus Ridolph—eyes like bubbles, eyes flame red, eyes coal-pit black. One fish trailed a bridal-train of fins, another wore an antler-like head-growth.