The Potter of Firsk and Other Stories

by Jack Vance

He walked cautiously out into the center of the pavilion, noting a trembling underfoot as of heavy machinery. In renewed apprehension he estimated the stability of the columns and was not reassured to find them quivering and swaying. Joe seemed oblivious to the danger. Allixter gingerly approached the edge of the pavilion, every instant expecting the precariously-perched pediment to land on his head.

  The view was different from the outlook across the drab sea of ash. From here the panorama, if strange and unearthly, had a certain haunting charm. A long murky valley lay cradled between two low hills. Two or three miles distant, at the bottom of the valley, lay a glass-calm lake and the mirror of its surface reflected the swarm of many-colored suns.

  Along the hills purple shrubs grew almost like Earthly vines and in the valley black-green paddies lay in rectangular blocks to the limit of his vision. He noticed what appeared to be a village about halfway to the lake—a row of neat sheds open at front and rear under a line of spindle-shaped lime-green trees like Lombardy poplars.

  There was a sharp sound, a terrific crack which reverberated across the valley. Joe screeched, ducked back, huddled trembling in the middle of the pavilion. Allixter, all goose-flesh lest the pediment topple and crush him, nevertheless could not tear himself from the spectacle in the valley.

  The hill to his right had opened in a vast split at least a mile long and perhaps a hundred yards wide. A sheet of white flame issued from this seam and blasted up at a slant clear across the valley. Heat seared Allixter’s face and he dodged behind one of the slender columns, which shuddered and swayed before his face.

  “Phew!” said Allixter to himself. “This planet is a poor place to plan a vacation. No wonder it’s a wreck!”

  Joe came cringing up beside him like a frightened dog in search of comfort. Allixter grinned in spite of himself. “I can see why these boys act like they’re scared to death. No telling where the next outburst takes place.”

  He studied Joe with a new concentration. Round dull-eyed face under a ludicrous head-dress, face without expression, coincidentally human. Round arms fringed with black hair, round sinuous legs joining the torso like pipes to a boiler.

  Allixter speculated as to Joe’s ultimate motives. Whatever they might be, whatever thoughts passed through the creature’s organ for thinking, they were certainly indescribable in Earth terms. “We’ve got something in common, Joe,” said Allixter. “Neither one of us wants to be blown to smithereens.”

  There was one vestige of cheer to be derived from the situation, thought Allixter—Joe’s mental patterns were not those of an evolutionized predator. By Gram’s Theorem the carnivore that evolved to civilization retained the ferocity and callousness of his prototype. The herbivore tended to placidity, discipline and convention—while the omnivores were erratic, prone to nervous disorders and unpredictable emotion.

  Joe tugged at Allixter’s arm. Allixter held back a minute, then relaxed and followed. “There’s no point in thwarting you; I’ll never get home. Perhaps even now you’re taking me to the out-tube—and that reminds me, I must watch for any small trinkets to take back with me. A man can’t get rich on a thousand franks a month.”

  He swept the spangled sky with curious eyes. “I must be in the heart of a cluster—maybe past the Milky Way. I’m a long way from home. It’s avarice which has brought me out here, the old fault. Oh well, let’s see what good old Joe wants.”

  Joe led him around the side of the pavilion along a walk built of thin stone slats. Allixter felt them vibrate and throb under his feet as if to the impulse of powerful machinery nearby. Behind the pavilion rose a hill. A stone building thrust forward, its after end under the slope.

  The walls were great rusty gray-yellow masses of masonry, studded and strapped with metal bars like a fortress. The walkway of stone strips came to an end. They trod on the bare ground and it thudded and throbbed with an ever heavier pulse. Joe stopped at a heavy door which, slightly ajar, vibrated on its hinges.

  Joe squeaked, Allixter turned on the Linguaid.

  “Large machine bad. Build good. Danger. Large machine wreck friend one. Friend two,” here he tapped Allixter’s chest. “Friend two. Build man come through hole. Go see large machine. Danger. Wreck friend. Large danger. Large machine enemy. Make large wreck.”

  Allixter gingerly approached the door. “You don’t make the project sound very inviting.” He squinted through the slit into a large bare hall. The floor was flagged with great squares of polished red stone eight feet on a side. The walls were faced from floor to ceiling with rectangular panels, evidently removable. Where one of the panels had been swung aside Allixter glimpsed masses of exquisitely complicated and delicate machinery.

  A track appeared to make a circuit of the hall; at the range of Allixter’s vision a trolley supported a high black case. From the controls and dial-settings at one side this mobile case appeared to be another massive mechanism.

  Such were the inorganic aspects of the hall and Allixter noted them with a single glance. Then he gave his attention to another object, at once more interesting and fuller of implications regarding his own future. It was a corpse on the floor—a man with a crushed skull.

  The face of the dead man was gaunt and greenish-yellow. His body was thin, his skin stretched taut over sharp bones. The entire effect was that of an exotic bird cruelly stripped of its feathers, murdered and flung in a heap.

  The body had apparently lain in its present state for several days and Allixter was glad that in his air-film he was not forced to breathe the air of the hall.

  Breathing—he scrutinized the corpse once more. No air-suit or head-dome was in evidence. The man had been able to breathe the halogens which poisoned the atmosphere for an Earthman. Odd, reflected Allixter. Joe pushed him forward. “Go. Large machine wreck. Danger.”

  Allixter held back. “Desire life. Desire avoid danger. Fear.”

  Joe said, “See.” He opened the door, slid inside with a sidewise motion. As he loped around the hall, he pumped his shoulders furiously, squeezing forth a steady flow of shrill sound.

  “Joe,” said Allixter admiringly, “if we were back on Earth I’d take you to Scotland and list you with the Queen’s Own, where you’d play lead bagpipe without the bagpipe.”

  Joe never halted his trumpeting till once more he joined Allixter outside the door.

  “Go,” said Joe. “Talk, danger absent. Silence, danger.” He tapped Allixter’s chest. “Large machine build-man come through hole, build large machine.”

  The first glimmerings of enlightenment came to Allixter. “I think I see it. There’s some kind of machine in there you want me to fix. It’s dangerous if it’s not fixed and it’s dangerous while I’m in there unless I keep talking.” He uttered a sharp bark of laughter.

  “Schmitz should see me now. He calls me the Silent Scot and now I’ll be talking and prattling like a jay. Oh well.” He sighed. “A thousand franks a month is security for my old age—so long as I survive my job. And I’ll never starve…”

  He looked into the hall once again, chewing his lip in frustrated silence and wishing he had established the interrogatives in the native language.

  “I may be the world’s best mechanic,” said Allixter, “but coming cold-turkey on an off-planet machine, not knowing what’s wrong with it, not even knowing what it’s supposed to do in the first place—this is the stuff old Willy Johnson died from.”

  Joe prodded him anxiously. Far in the distance he heard a great thud, a blast as of an enormous explosion. Joe quivered, squeaked in agitation, fanned the quills of his headdress in all directions.

  “A man dies but once,” reflected Allixter, “and if it’s my time to go at least the Chief and Sam Schmitz won’t have the satisfaction of hearing about it.”

  He pushed the door wide and was about to step into the room when Joe pointed over his head, squeaked, “Danger.”

  Allixter looked up. Overhead a great hammer, swinging from a ball and socket joint in the center of the ceili
ng, hung cocked back against the wall—apparently the agency by which the corpse on the floor had been crushed.

  “Danger,” said Joe. “Talk many.”

  Allixter entered the hall, pushing the Linguaid before him. “I wish I was home,” he said in a loud voice. “I wish I knew where the tube came out. So near and yet so far and here I am depending on my voice for my life like a canary.”

  The Linguaid, picking up translatable words, squeaked and groaned so that the hall rang with mingled sounds.

  Allixter thought, “Why should I have to talk when there’s a perfectly good mechanical talker right here under my hand?” He pushed the Linguaid to the middle of the hall, set the index so that Cycle A was repeated, together with Joe’s recorded interpolations. Now, he thought, there should be sufficient sound to distract anyone.

  Warily eyeing the poised hammer Allixter scrutinized the hall. Beyond doubt repairs to the machinery had been underway when death had stopped the hand of the mechanic. Panels had been removed from the wall and the face of the mobile unit had been demounted. Various cams, gears, shafts, assemblies of indescribable nature mounted in small cases, lay neatly in a tray beside a rack of tools. Apparently the mechanic had barely started when—Allixter turned an anxious glance at the poised hammer.

  No, thought Allixter, too precarious—too chancy.

  He climbed up the side of the mobile unit. Perching on the top he took from his belt the heat-torch which served him both as weapon and tool. Stretching across the gap he played the torch on the shaft. Fire spattered, the metal melted in a shower of sparks, the hammer dropped with a clatter, missed the Linguaid by inches. Allixter clapped a hand to his forehead, jammed the torch back in his belt.

  A voice cried out in the native tongue, screaming, hissing, groaning, protesting. Allixter hurriedly descended to the floor, stood searching for the source of the voice. The sweat running off his back made small rivulets down his spine.

  He was alone in the room.

  The voice continued, and after a moment he located its source—a metal diaphragm at the far end of the hall. Directly above a many-faceted lens about six inches in diameter was mounted so that it projected slightly into the room.

  He wheeled the Linguaid close, said, “Friend, friend. Come out, see.” It must be a fellow to the corpse, thought Allixter—perhaps one who watched by remote vision through the many-faceted lens.

  The speaker said in English, “Build across many words. Build words through machine.”

  Evidently the watcher was an intelligent being, thought Allixter. Very well, Cycle B. He started the sequence but the voice made no attempt to supply words for the automaton. It said, “Man talk. Man talk.”

  “Ha-hmm,” said Allixter to himself. “The chap is sensible enough, wants to learn English. It seems that I do the talking rather than he. I suppose this is covered in my salary although it’s true that I signed on as a mechanic and no blooming linguist. Ah, well…”

  He settled to the task and supplied English words for the depicted sequences and relationships.

  Cycle B, with the pronouns, was complete. He started Cycle C. The voice said, “More words, faster. All comes understood and remembered.”

  “Hmm,” muttered Allixter, “I’ve got a ruddy genius on my hands. The chap has a mind like a sponge. Very well, I’ll give him as much as he can take.” And he described the screen situations in great detail, supplementing the prime concepts with additional nominal and verbal materials.

  In two hours he had completed Cycles C, D, E and F—normally the work of a month.

  As he flicked off the switch he said, “Now, my friend, wherever you are, you should be able to talk to me and maybe you’ll answer a few questions.”

  IV

  His own voice returned from the speaker. Allixter stared in surprise. “Ask—the files will return information. That is their function.”

  “First…” Allixter paused. What was first? As he considered he heard a grind, a swish. Overhead the stump of rod swung toward him. If the hammer had yet depended Allixter would have been mate to the corpse on the floor.

  Allixter crouched in alarm. “Who’s trying to kill me? Why? All I want is to get back to Earth.”

  The speaker said with disarming calmness, “The protective instruments try to kill you because the inhibitor circuit is disorganized.”

  Allixter said with a worried glance at the corpse, “How am I supposed to survive?”

  “A constant impulse from the attention units drains ergs from the B-sub C monitor and holds the relay open. As long as you supply material that occupies the attention banks the automatic protective devices will not function.”

  “I’ll try as hard as I can,” said Allixter. “Is conversation safe?”

  “As long as attention is occupied. Three seconds is the critical lapse. This is the time required to leak the charge past the relay condensers.”

  “Who are you? Who’s speaking?”

  “This voice is the courtesy unit of the Planet Machine.”

  “What’s that again?” asked Allixter in puzzlement.

  The message was repeated. Allixter stared in bewilderment and awe. “As I get it then you’re a kind of—robot?”

  “Yes.”

  Three seconds passed swiftly. Hurriedly Allixter asked, “What’s your function? What do you do?”

  “When repair machine directs world-wide installations which collect energy from the suns, apply this energy to the designated uses.”

  “Which are?”

  “Machine mines ore, smelts, refines ore, alloys and shapes metal parts, manages photo-synthetic tanks producing fluoro-silicon and fluoro-carbon compounds, combines and fabricates items in Classification Zo, Schedules Ba-Nineteen through Pec-Twenty-five. When complete, products are delivered to the master-planet Plagigonstok through the transfer.”

  Allixter found a hint of enlightenment in the explanation. “I understand then that this planet is a colony of another world? Plagi—Plagi—something or other?And the natives, where do they fit in?”

  “The natives supply what unskilled and flexible labor may be necessary. They are paid in commodities.”

  Allixter glanced at the corpse. “Where are all the—what do you call them?”

  “Question is inexact.”

  “What kind of man is that dead creature on the floor—what race?”

  “He is a Plag, a Lord of the Universe.”

  Allixter snorted. “Are there any others nearby?”

  “There are twelve similar in condition to this one.”

  A small chill ran along Allixter’s neck. “What do you mean—similar condition?”

  “Bodily functions disrupted by disorganization of mental centers.”

  “Dead?”

  “Dead.”

  “You killed them?”

  “Protective instruments killed them.”

  “Why?”

  “Inhibitor circuit is not functioning. Machine is fundamentally ordered not to kill Plags. This order is occluded. Now machine kills Plags freely without inhibition and destroys Plag installations at random.”

  “Then why don’t you kill the natives?”

  “Inhibitors concerning autochthones are still in place. Machine protects autochthones. Machine kills alien life-forms who enter this room, the mental center of the machine. You survive only by accident—attention units, draining from B-sub C monitor, shunt out exterminators.”

  Allixter grimaced. “There’s a serious oversight somewhere.”

  The machine was silent. Allixter waited for a reply. One second—two seconds—he realized with a prickle of urgency that the machine responded only to questions, that the circuits were not set up to exchange small-talk with casual passers-by.

  He blurted, “Yes. No. I’ve seen robots and calculating machines and automatic mechanisms but I’ve never seen anything like you. You’re a pretty big piece of machinery—er, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  One second—two seconds
. Allixter’s mind was blank.

  “Ah—the Plags built all this machinery?”

  “The Plags organized the nucleus, consisting of planning, engineering, mechanical, energy and operating segments, delineated the ultimate ends desired. Subsidiary elements were conceived by the planning segment, designed by the engineering segment, constructed in the central factory. The entire planet is now noded with various agencies which the planning segment considers useful.”

  “Why all the blasting? The exploding buildings, the hillsides spitting out fire?”

  “Installations benefiting Plags are being destroyed. Destructive agencies exist. Inhibitors formerly restrained them. Now inhibitors are cut out. Destructive agencies go into effect at random.”

  Allixter grinned. “The Plags won’t like this—will they?”

  “Accurate information unavailable.”

  “How will the Plags fix the machine?”

  “No information. As soon as Plags arrive, they are killed.”

  “How come the natives were waiting for me at the in-curtain?”

  “Precise information unavailable. Possibility exists that they dispatched message to Plagigonstok requesting service crew, and awaited reply.”

  “Ah!” Allixter nodded sagely. “How long has the machine been out of order? And why did not the Plag service man repair it at once before it went out?”

  “When machine is in disrepair the maintenance unit moves along tracks to the rupture and makes the necessary renewals. The service mechanic never repairs the machine. It is too complex. In this case the maintenance unit was out of order and the mechanic was occupied in repairing it. Then the inhibitor circuit fused. The fundamental orders went into effect and the exterminators killed the Plag.”

  Allixter sighed. Then, remembering that sighs occupied time, he said, “How can I extend this three-second time limit? I can’t stand here forever asking you questions.”

  “You can supply problems to occupy the attention units or better you can repair either the inhibitor circuit or the maintenance units.”

  “And while I’m working, you kill me?”

  “Yes.”