The Potter of Firsk and Other Stories

by Jack Vance

  He approached the clerk, a girl just short of maturity, who had been given an exquisite loveliness. She wore the pareu of the Mi-Tuun, a flowered sash about the waist, and reed sandals. Her skin glowed like one of the amber glazes at her back; she was slender, quiet, friendly.

  “This is all very beautiful,” said Thomm. “For instance, what is the price of this?” He touched a tall flagon glazed a light green, streaked and shot with silver threads.

  The price she mentioned, in spite of the beauty of the piece, was higher than what he had expected. Observing his surprise, the girl said, “They are our ancestors, and to sell them as cheaply as wood or glass would be irreverent.”

  Thomm raised his eyebrows, and decided to ignore what he considered a ceremonial personification.

  “Where’s the pottery made?” he asked. “In Penolpan?”

  The girl hesitated and Thomm felt a sudden shade of restraint. She turned her head, looked out toward the Kukmank Range. “Back in the hills are the kilns; out there our ancestors go, and the pots are brought back. Aside from this I know nothing.”

  Thomm said carefully, “Do you prefer not to talk of it?”

  She shrugged. “Indeed, there’s no reason why I should. Except that we Mi-Tuun fear the Potters, and the thought of them oppresses us.”

  “But why is that?”

  She grimaced. “No one knows what lies beyond the first hill. Sometimes we see the glow of furnaces, and then sometimes when there are no dead for the Potters they take the living.”

  Thomm thought that if so, here was a case for the interference of the Bureau, even to the extent of armed force.

  “Who are these Potters?”

  “There,” she said, and pointed. “There is a Potter.”

  Following her finger, he saw a man riding out along the plain. He was taller, heavier than the Mi-Tuun. Thomm could not see him distinctly, wrapped as he was in a long gray burnoose, but he appeared to have a pale skin and reddish-brown hair. He noted the bulging panniers on the pack-beast. “What’s he taking with him now?”

  “Fish, paper, cloth, oil—goods he traded his pottery for.”

  Thomm picked up his pest-killing equipment. “I think I’ll visit the Potters one of these days.”

  “No—” said the girl.

  “Why not?”

  “It’s very dangerous. They’re fierce, secretive—”

  Thomm smiled. “I’ll be careful.”

  Back at the Bureau he found Covill stretched out on a wicker chaise lounge, half-asleep. At the sight of Thomm he roused himself, sat up.

  “Where the devil have you been? I told you to get the estimates on that power plant ready today.”

  “I put them on your desk,” replied Thomm politely. “If you’ve been out front at all, you couldn’t have missed them.”

  Covill eyed him belligerently, but for once found himself at a loss for words. He subsided in his chair with a grunt. As a general rule Thomm paid little heed to Covill’s sharpness, recognizing it as resentment against the main office. Covill felt his abilities deserved greater scope, a more important post.

  Thomm sat down, helped himself to a glass of Covill’s beer. “Do you know anything about the potteries back in the mountains?”

  Covill grunted: “A tribe of bandits, something of the sort.” He hunched forward, reached for the beer.

  “I looked into the pottery bazaar today,” said Thomm. “A clerk called the pots ‘ancestors’. Seemed rather strange.”

  “The longer you knock around the planets,” Covill stated, “the stranger things you see. Nothing could surprise me any more—except maybe a transfer to the Main Office.” He snorted bitterly, gulped at his beer. Refreshed, he went on in a less truculent voice, “I’ve heard odds and ends about these Potters, nothing definite, and I’ve never had time to look into ’em. I suppose it’s religious ceremonial, rites of death. They take away the dead bodies, bury ’em for a fee or trade goods.”

  “The clerk said that when they don’t get the dead, sometimes they take the living.”

  “Eh? What’s that?” Covill’s hard blue eyes stared bright from his red face. Thomm repeated his statement.

  Covill scratched his chin, presently hoisted himself to his feet. “Let’s fly out, just for the devilment of it, and see what these Potters are up to. Been wanting to go out a long time.”

  Thomm brought the copter out of the hangar, set down in front of the office, and Covill gingerly climbed in. Covill’s sudden energy mystified Thomm, especially since it included a ride in the copter. Covill had an intense dislike of flying, and usually refused to set foot in an aircraft.

  The blades sang, grabbed the air, the copter wafted high. Penolpan became a checkerboard of brown roofs and foliage. Thirty miles distant, across a dry sandy plain, rose the Kukmank Range—barren shoulders and thrusts of gray rock. At first sight locating a settlement among the tumble appeared a task of futility.

  Covill peering down into the wastes grumbled something to this effect; Thomm, however, pointed toward a column of smoke. “Potters need kilns. Kilns need heat—”

  As they approached the smoke, they saw that it issued not from brick stacks but from a fissure at the peak of a conical dome.

  “Volcano,” said Covill, with an air of vindication. “Let’s try out there along that ridge—then if there’s nothing we’ll go back.”

  Thomm had been peering intently below. “I think we’ve found them right here. Look close, you can see buildings.”

  He dropped the copter, and the rows of stone houses became plain.

  “Should we land?” Thomm asked dubiously. “They’re supposed to be fairly rough.”

  “Certainly, set down,” snapped Covill. “We’re official representatives of the System.”

  The fact might mean little to a tribe of mountaineers, reflected Thomm; nevertheless he let the copter drop onto a stony flat place in the center of the village.

  The copter, if it had not alarmed the Potters, at least had made them cautious. For several minutes there was no sign of life. The stone cabins stood bleak and vacant as cairns.

  Covill alighted, and Thomm, assuring himself that his gamma-gun was in easy reach, followed. Covill stood by the copter, looking up and down the line of houses. “Cagey set of beggars,” he growled. “Well…we better stay here till someone makes a move.”

  To this plan Thomm agreed heartily, so they waited in the shadow of the copter. It was clearly the village of the Potters. Shards lay everywhere—brilliant bits of glazed ware glinting like lost jewels. Down the slope rose a heap of broken bisque, evidently meant for later use, and beyond was a long tile-roofed shed. Thomm sought in vain for a kiln. A fissure into the side of the mountain caught his eye, a fissure with a well-worn path leading into it. An intriguing hypothesis formed in his mind—but now three men had appeared, tall and erect in gray burnooses. The hoods were flung back, and they looked like monks of medieval Earth, except that instead of monkish tonsure, fuzzy red hair rose in a peaked mound above their heads.

  The leader approached with a determined step, and Thomm stiffened, prepared for anything. Not so Covill; he appeared contemptuously at ease, a lord among serfs.

  Ten feet away the leader halted—a man taller than Thomm with a hook nose, hard intelligent eyes like gray pebbles. He waited an instant but Covill only watched him. At last the Potter spoke in a courteous tone.

  “What brings strangers to the village of the Potters?”

  “I’m Covill, of the Planetary Affairs Bureau in Penolpan, official representative of the System. This is merely a routine visit, to see how things are going with you.”

  “We make no complaints,” replied the chief.

  “I’ve heard reports of you Potters kidnaping Mi-Tuun,” said Covill. “Is there any truth in that?”

  “Kidnaping?” mused the chief. “What is that?”

  Covill explained. The chief rubbed his chin, staring at Covill with eyes black as water.

  “There is an anc
ient agreement,” said the chief at last. “The Potters are granted the bodies of the dead; and occasionally when the need is great, we do anticipate nature by a year or two. But what matter? The soul lives forever in the pot it beautifies.”

  Covill brought out his pipe, and Thomm held his breath. Loading the pipe was sometimes a preliminary to the cold sidelong stares which occasionally ended in an explosion of wrath. For the moment however Covill held himself in check.

  “Just what do you do with the corpses?”

  The leader raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Is it not obvious? No? But then you are no potter—Our glazes require lead, sand, clay, alkali, spar and lime. All but the lime is at our hand, and this we extract from the bones of the dead.”

  Covill lit his pipe, puffed. Thomm relaxed. For the moment the danger was past.

  “I see,” said Covill. “Well, we don’t want to interfere in any native customs, rites or practices, so long as the peace isn’t disturbed. You’ll have to understand there can’t be any more kidnaping. The corpses—that’s between you and whoever’s responsible for the body, but lives are more important than pots. If you need lime, I can get you tons of it. There must be limestone beds somewhere on the planet. One of these days I’ll send Thomm out prospecting and you’ll have more lime than you’ll know what to do with.”

  The chief shook his head, half amused. “Natural lime is a poor substitute for the fresh live lime of bones. There are certain other salts which act as fluxes, and then, of course, the spirit of the person is in the bones and this passes into the glaze and gives it an inner fire otherwise unobtainable.”

  Covill puffed, puffed, puffed, watching the chief with his hard blue eyes. “I don’t care what you use,” he said, “as long as there’s no kidnaping, no murder. If you need lime, I’ll help you find it; that’s what I’m here for, to help you, and raise your standard of living; but I’m also here to protect the Mi-Tuun from raiding. I can do both—one about as good as the other.”

  The corners of the chief’s mouth drew back. Thomm interposed a question before he spat out an angry reply. “Tell me, where are your kilns?”

  The chief turned him a cool glance. “Our firing is done by the Great Monthly Burn. We stack our ware in the caves, and then, on the twenty-second day, the scorch rises from below. One entire day the heat roars up white and glowing, and two weeks later the caves have cooled for us to go after our ware.”

  “That sounds interesting,” said Covill. “I’d like to look around your works. Where’s your pottery, down there in that shed?”

  The chief moved not a muscle. “No man may look inside that shed,” he said slowly, “unless he is a Potter—and then only after he has proved his mastery of the clay.”

  “How does he go about that?” Covill asked lightly.

  “At the age of fourteen he goes forth from his home with a hammer, a mortar, a pound of bone lime. He must mine clay, lead, sand, spar. He must find iron for brown, malachite for green, cobalt earth for blue, and he must grind a glaze in his mortar, shape and decorate a tile, and set it in the Mouth of the Great Burn. If the tile is successful, the body whole, the glaze good, then he is permitted to enter the long pottery and know the secrets of the craft.”

  Covill pulled the pipe from his mouth, asked quizzically, “And if the tile’s no good?”

  “We need no poor Potters,” said the chief. “We always need bone-lime.”

  Thomm had been glancing along the shards of colored pottery. “Why don’t you use yellow glaze?”

  The chief flung out his arms. “Yellow glaze? It is unknown, a secret no Potter has penetrated. Iron gives a dingy tan, silver a gray-yellow, and antimony burns out in the heat of the Great Burn. The pure rich yellow, the color of the sun…ah, that is a dream.”

  Covill was uninterested. “Well, we’ll be flying back, since you don’t care to show us around. Remember, if there’s any technical help you want, I can get it for you. I might even find how to make you your precious yellow—”

  “Impossible,” said the chief. “Have not we, the Potters of the Universe, sought for thousands of years?”

  “…But there must be no more taking of lives. If necessary, I’ll put a stop to the potting altogether.”

  The chief’s eyes blazed. “Your words are not friendly!”

  “If you don’t think I can do it, you’re mistaken,” said Covill. “I’ll drop a bomb down the throat of your volcano and cave in the entire mountain. The System protects every man-jack everywhere, and that means the Mi-Tuun from a tribe of Potters who wants their bones.”

  Thomm plucked him nervously by the sleeve. “Get back in the copter,” he whispered. “They’re getting ugly. In another minute they’ll jump us.”

  Covill turned his back on the lowering chief, deliberately climbed into the copter. Thomm followed more warily. In his eyes the chief was teetering on the verge of attack, and Thomm had no inclination for fighting.

  He flung in the clutch; the blades chewed at the air; the copter rose, leaving a knot of gray-burnoosed Potters silent below.

  Covill settled back with an air of satisfaction. “There’s only one way to handle people like that, and that is, get the upper hand on ’em; that’s the only way they’ll respect you. You act just a little uncertain, they sense it, sure as fate, and then you’re a goner.”

  Thomm said nothing. Covill’s methods might produce immediate results, but in the long run they seemed short-sighted, intolerant, unsympathetic. In Covill’s place he would have stressed the Bureau’s ability to provide substitutes for the bone-lime, and possibly assist with any technical difficulties—though indeed, they seemed to be masters of their craft, completely sure of their ability. Yellow glaze, of course, still was lacking them. That evening he inserted a strip from the Bureau library into his portable viewer. The subject was pottery, and Thomm absorbed as much of the lore as he was able.

  Covill’s pet project—a small atomic power plant to electrify Penolpan—kept him busy the next few days, even though he worked reluctantly. Penolpan, with its canals softly lit by yellow lanterns, the gardens glowing to candles and rich with the fragrance of night-blossoms, was a city from fairyland; electricity, motors, fluorescents, water pumps would surely dim the charm—Covill, however, was insistent that the world would benefit by a gradual integration into the tremendous industrial complex of the System.

  Twice Thomm passed by the pottery bazaar and twice he turned in, both to marvel at the glistening ware and to speak with the girl who tended the shelves. She had a fascinating beauty, grace and charm, breathed into her soul by a lifetime in Penolpan; she was interested in everything Thomm had to tell her of the outside universe, and Thomm, young, softhearted and lonely, looked forward to his visits with increasing anticipation.

  For a period Covill kept him furiously busy. Reports were due at the home office, and Covill assigned the task to Thomm, while he either dozed in his wicker chair or rode the canals of Penolpan in his special red and black boat.

  At last, late one afternoon, Thomm threw aside his journals and set off down the street, under the shade of great kaotang trees. He crossed through the central market, where the shopkeepers were busy with late trade, turned down a path beside a turf-banked canal and presently came to the pottery bazaar.

  But he looked in vain for the girl. A thin man in a black jacket stood quietly to the side, waiting his pleasure. At last Thomm turned to him. “Where’s Su-then?”

  The man hesitated, Thomm grew impatient.

  “Well, where is she? Sick? Has she given up working here?”

  “She has gone.”

  “Gone where?”

  “Gone to her ancestors.”

  Thomm’s skin froze to stiffness. “What?”

  The clerk lowered his head.

  “Is she dead?”

  “Yes, she is dead.”

  “But—how? She was healthy a day or so ago.”

  The man of the Mi-Tuun hesitated once more. “There are many ways of dyin
g, Earthman.”

  Thomm became angry. “Tell me now—what happened to her?”

  Rather startled by Thomm’s vehemence the man blurted, “The Potters have called her to the hills; she is gone, but soon she will live forever, her spirit wrapped in glorious glass—”

  “Let me get this straight,” said Thomm. “The Potters took her—alive?”

  “Yes—alive.”

  “And any others?”

  “Three others.”

  “All alive?”

  “All alive.”

  Thomm ran back to the Bureau. Covill, by chance, was in the front office, checking Thomm’s work. Thomm blurted, “The Potters have been raiding again—they took four Mi-Tuun in the last day or so.”

  Covill thrust his chin forward, cursed fluently. Thomm understood that his anger was not so much for the act itself, but for the fact that the Potters had defied him, disobeyed his orders. Covill personally had been insulted; now there would be action.

  “Get the copter out,” said Covill shortly. “Bring it around in front.”

  When Thomm set the copter down Covill was waiting with one of the three atom bombs in the Bureau armory—a long cylinder attached to a parachute. Covill snapped it in place on the copter, then stood back. “Take this over that blasted volcano,” he said harshly. “Drop it down the crater. I’ll teach those murdering devils a lesson they won’t forget. Next time it’ll be on their village.”

  Thomm, aware of Covill’s dislike of flying, was not surprised by the assignment. Without further words he took off, rose above Penolpan, flew out toward the Kukmank Range.

  His anger cooled. The Potters, caught in the rut of their customs, were unaware of evil. Covill’s orders seemed ill-advised—headstrong, vindictive, over-hasty. Suppose the Mi-Tuun were yet alive? Would it not be better to negotiate for their release? Instead of hovering over the volcano, he dropped his copter into the gray village, and assuring himself of his gamma-gun, he jumped out onto the dismal stony square.