The Potter of Firsk and Other Stories

by Jack Vance

  “What kind of a man was it? Strange looking?”

  “No. He was Cirgameski.”

  “Oh. You saw him with your own eyes, eh?”

  The steward bowed, and his loose white mantle fell forward. “Exactly, sir.”

  “No helmet, no space-suit?”

  “He wore a short Singhalût vest and pantaloons and a yellow Hadrasi hat. No more.”

  “And the horse?”

  “Ah, the horse! There’s a different matter.”

  “Different how?”

  “I can’t describe the horse. I was intent on the man.”

  “Did you recognize him?”

  “By the brow of Lord Allah, it’s well not to look too closely when such matters occur.”

  “Then—you did recognize him!”

  “I must be at my task, sir.”

  Murphy frowned in vexation at the steward’s retreating back, then bent over his camera to check the tape-feed. If anything appeared now, and his eyes could see it, the two-hundred million audience of Know Your Universe! could see it with him.

  When he looked up, Murphy made a frantic grab for the stanchion, then relaxed. Cirgamesç had taken the Great Twitch. It was an illusion, a psychological quirk. One instant the planet lay ahead; then a man winked or turned away, and when he looked back, ‘ahead’ had become ‘below’; the planet had swung an astonishing ninety degrees across the sky, and they were falling!

  Murphy leaned against the stanchion. “‘The Great Twitch’,” he muttered to himself, “I’d like to get that on two hundred million screens!”

  Several hours passed. Cirgamesç grew. The Sampan Range rose up like a dark scab; the valley sultanates of Singhalût, Hadra, New Batavia, and Boeng-Bohôt showed like glistening chicken-tracks; the Great Rift Colony of Sundaman stretched down through the foothills like the trail of a slug.

  A loudspeaker voice rattled the ship. “Attention passengers for Singhalût and other points on Cirgamesç! Kindly prepare your luggage for disembarkation. Customs at Singhalût are extremely thorough. Passengers are warned to take no weapons, drugs or explosives ashore. This is important!”

  The warning turned out to be an understatement. Murphy was plied with questions. He suffered search of an intimate nature. He was three-dimensionally X-rayed with a range of frequencies calculated to excite fluorescence in whatever object he might have secreted in his stomach, in a hollow bone, or under a layer of flesh.

  His luggage was explored with similar minute attention, and Murphy rescued his cameras with difficulty. “What’re you so damn anxious about? I don’t have drugs; I don’t have contraband…”

  “It’s guns, your Excellency. Guns, weapons, explosives…”

  “I don’t have any guns.”

  “But these objects here?”

  “They’re cameras. They record pictures and sounds and smells.”

  The inspector seized the cases with a glittering smile of triumph. “They resemble no cameras of my experience; I fear I shall have to impound…”

  A young man in loose white pantaloons, a pink vest, pale green cravat and a complex black turban strolled up. The inspector made a swift obeisance, with arms spread wide. “Excellency.”

  The young man raised two fingers. “You may find it possible to spare Mr. Murphy any unnecessary formality.”

  “As your Excellency recommends…” The inspector nimbly repacked Murphy’s belongings, while the young man looked on benignly.

  Murphy covertly inspected his face. The skin was smooth, the color of the rising moon; the eyes were narrow, dark, superficially placid. The effect was of silken punctilio with hot ruby blood close beneath.

  Satisfied with the inspector’s zeal, he turned to Murphy. “Allow me to introduce myself, Tuan Murphy. I am Ali-Tomás, of the House of Singhalût, and my father the Sultan begs you to accept our poor hospitality.”

  “Why, thank you,” said Murphy. “This is a very pleasant surprise.”

  “If you will allow me to conduct you…” He turned to the inspector. “Mr. Murphy’s luggage to the palace.”

  Murphy accompanied Ali-Tomás into the outside light, fitting his own quick step to the prince’s feline saunter. This is coming it pretty soft, he said to himself. I’ll have a magnificent suite, with bowls of fruit and gin pahits, not to mention two or three silken girls with skin like rich cream bringing me towels in the shower…Well, well, well, it’s not so bad working for Know Your Universe! after all! I suppose I ought to unlimber my camera…

  Prince Ali-Tomás watched him with interest. “And what is the audience of Know Your Universe!?”

  “We call ’em ‘participants’.”

  “Expressive. And how many participants do you serve?”

  “Oh, the Bowdler Index rises and falls. We’ve got about two hundred million screens, with five hundred million participants.”

  “Fascinating! And tell me—how do you record smells?”

  Murphy displayed the odor recorder on the side of the camera, with its gelatinous track which fixed the molecular design.

  “And the odors recreated—they are like the originals?”

  “Pretty close. Never exact, but none of the participants knows the difference. Sometimes the synthetic odor is an improvement.”

  “Astounding!” murmured the prince.

  “And sometimes…Well, Carson Tenlake went out to get the myrrh-blossoms on Venus. It was a hot day—as days usually are on Venus—and a long climb. When the show was run off, there was more smell of Carson than of flowers.”

  Prince Ali-Tomás laughed politely. “We turn through here.”

  They came out into a compound paved with red, green and white tiles. Beneath the valley roof was a sinuous trough, full of haze and warmth and golden light. As far in either direction as the eye could reach, the hillsides were terraced, barred in various shades of green. Spattering the valley floor were tall canvas pavilions, tents, booths, shelters.

  “Naturally,” said Prince Ali-Tomás, “we hope that you and your participants will enjoy Singhalût. It is a truism that, in order to import, we must export; we wish to encourage a pleasurable response to the ‘Made in Singhalût’ tag on our batiks, carvings, lacquers.”

  They rolled quietly across the square in a surface-car displaying the House emblem. Murphy rested against deep, cool cushions. “Your inspectors are pretty careful about weapons.”

  Ali-Tomás smiled complacently. “Our existence is ordered and peaceful. You may be familiar with the concept of adak?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “A word, an idea from old Earth. Every living act is ordered by ritual. But our heritage is passionate—and when unyielding adak stands in the way of an irresistible emotion, there is turbulence, sometimes even killing.”

  “An amok.”

  “Exactly. It is as well that the amok has no weapons other than his knife. Otherwise he would kill twenty where now he kills one.”

  The car rolled along a narrow avenue, scattering pedestrians to either side like the bow of a boat spreading foam. The men wore loose white pantaloons and a short open vest; the women wore only the pantaloons.

  “Handsome set of people,” remarked Murphy.

  Ali-Tomás again smiled complacently. “I’m sure Singhalût will present an inspiring and beautiful spectacle for your program.”

  Murphy remembered the keynote to Howard Frayberg’s instructions: “Excitement! Sex! Mystery!” Frayberg cared little for inspiration or beauty. “I imagine,” he said casually, “that you celebrate a number of interesting festivals? Colorful dancing? Unique customs?”

  Ali-Tomás shook his head. “To the contrary. We left our superstitions and ancestor-worship back on Earth. We are quiet Mohammedans and indulge in very little festivity. Perhaps here is the reason for amoks and sjambaks.”

  “Sjambaks?”

  “We are not proud of them. You will hear sly rumor, and it is better that I arm you beforehand with truth.”

  “What is a sjambak?”r />
  “They are bandits, flouters of authority. I will show you one presently.”

  “I heard,” said Murphy, “of a man riding a horse up to meet the spaceships. What would account for a story like that?”

  “It can have no possible basis,” said Prince Ali-Tomás. “We have no horses on Cirgamesç. None whatever.”

  “But…”

  “The veriest idle talk. Such nonsense will have no interest for your intelligent participants.”

  The car rolled into a square a hundred yards on a side, lined with luxuriant banana palms. Opposite was an enormous pavilion of gold and violet silk, with a dozen peaked gables casting various changing sheens. In the center of the square a twenty-foot pole supported a cage about two feet wide, three feet long, and four feet high.

  Inside this cage crouched a naked man.

  The car rolled past. Prince Ali-Tomás waved an idle hand. The caged man glared down from bloodshot eyes. “That,” said Ali-Tomás, “is a sjambak. As you see,” a faint note of apology entered his voice, “we attempt to discourage them.”

  “What’s that metal object on his chest?”

  “The mark of his trade. By that you may know all sjambak. In these unsettled times only we of the House may cover our chests—all others must show themselves and declare themselves true Singhalûsi.”

  Murphy said tentatively, “I must come back here and photograph that cage.”

  Ali-Tomás smilingly shook his head. “I will show you our farms, our vines and orchards. Your participants will enjoy these; they have no interest in the dolor of an ignoble sjambak.”

  “Well,” said Murphy, “our aim is a well-rounded production. We want to show the farmers at work, the members of the great House at their responsibilities, as well as the deserved fate of wrongdoers.”

  “Exactly. For every sjambak there are ten thousand industrious Singhalûsi. It follows then that only one ten-thousandth part of your film should be devoted to this infamous minority.”

  “About three-tenths of a second, eh?”

  “No more than they deserve.”

  “You don’t know my Production Director. His name is Howard Frayberg, and…”

  Howard Frayberg was deep in conference with Sam Catlin, under the influence of what Catlin called his philosophic kick. It was the phase which Catlin feared most.

  “Sam,” said Frayberg, “do you know the danger of this business?”

  “Ulcers,” Catlin replied promptly.

  Frayberg shook his head. “We’ve got an occupational disease to fight—progressive mental myopia.”

  “Speak for yourself,” said Catlin.

  “Consider. We sit in this office. We think we know what kind of show we want. We send out our staff to get it. We’re signing the checks, so back it comes the way we asked for it. We look at it, hear it, smell it—and pretty soon we believe it: our version of the universe, full-blown from our brains like Minerva stepping out of Zeus. You see what I mean?”

  “I understand the words.”

  “We’ve got our own picture of what’s going on. We ask for it, we get it. It builds up and up—and finally we’re like mice in a trap built of our own ideas. We cannibalize our own brains.”

  “Nobody’ll ever accuse you of being stingy with a metaphor.”

  “Sam, let’s have the truth. How many times have you been off Earth?”

  “I went to Mars once. And I spent a couple of weeks at Aristillus Resort on the Moon.”

  Frayberg leaned back in his chair as if shocked. “And we’re supposed to be a couple of learned planetologists!”

  Catlin made grumbling noise in his throat. “I haven’t been around the zodiac, so what? You sneezed a few minutes ago and I said gesundheit, but I don’t have any doctor’s degree.”

  “There comes a time in a man’s life,” said Frayberg, “when he wants to take stock, get a new perspective.”

  “Relax, Howard, relax.”

  “In our case it means taking out our preconceived ideas, looking at them, checking our illusions against reality.”

  “Are you serious about this?”

  “Another thing,” said Frayberg, “I want to check up a little. Shifkin says the expense accounts are frightful. But he can’t fight it. When Keeler says he paid ten munits for a loaf of bread on Nekkar IV, who’s gonna call him on it?”

  “Hell, let him eat bread! That’s cheaper than making a safari around the cluster, spot-checking the super-markets.”

  Frayberg paid no heed. He touched a button; a three-foot sphere full of glistening motes appeared. Earth was at the center, with thin red lines, the scheduled spaceship routes, radiating out in all directions.

  “Let’s see what kind of circle we can make,” said Frayberg. “Gower’s here at Canopus, Keeler’s over here at Blue Moon, Wilbur Murphy’s at Sirgamesk…”

  “Don’t forget,” muttered Catlin, “we got a show to put on.”

  “We’ve got material for a year,” scoffed Frayberg. “Get hold of Space-Lines. We’ll start with Sirgamesk, and see what Wilbur Murphy’s up to.”

  Wilbur Murphy was being presented to the Sultan of Singhalût by the Prince Ali-Tomás. The Sultan, a small mild man of seventy, sat cross-legged on an enormous pink and green air-cushion. “Be at your ease, Mr. Murphy. We dispense with as much protocol here as practicable.” The Sultan had a dry clipped voice and the air of a rather harassed corporation executive. “I understand you represent Earth-Central Home Screen Network?”

  “I’m a staff photographer for the Know Your Universe! show.”

  “We export a great deal to Earth,” mused the Sultan, “but not as much as we’d like. We’re very pleased with your interest in us, and naturally we want to help you in every way possible. Tomorrow the Keeper of the Archives will present a series of charts analyzing our economy. Ali-Tomás shall personally conduct you through the fish-hatcheries. We want you to know we’re doing a great job out here in Singhalût.”

  “I’m sure you are,” said Murphy uncomfortably. “However, that isn’t quite the stuff I want.”

  “No? Just where do your desires lie?”

  Ali-Tomás said delicately, “Mr. Murphy took a rather profound interest in the sjambak displayed in the square.”

  “Oh. And you explained that these renegades could hold no interest for serious students of our planet?”

  Murphy started to explain that clustered around two hundred million screens tuned to Know Your Universe! were four or five hundred million participants, the greater part of them neither serious nor students. The Sultan cut in decisively. “I will now impart something truly interesting. We Singhalûsi are making preparations to reclaim four more valleys, with an added area of six hundred thousand acres! I shall put my physiographic models at your disposal; you may use them to the fullest extent!”

  “I’ll be pleased for the opportunity,” declared Murphy. “But tomorrow I’d like to prowl around the valley, meet your people, observe their customs, religious rites, courtships, funerals…”

  The Sultan pulled a sour face. “We are ditch-water dull. Festivals are celebrated quietly in the home; there is small religious fervor; courtships are consummated by family contract. I fear you will find little sensational material here in Singhalût.”

  “You have no temple dances?” asked Murphy. “No fire-walkers, snake-charmers—voodoo?”

  The Sultan smiled patronizingly. “We came out here to Cirgamesç to escape the ancient superstitions. Our lives are calm, orderly. Even the amoks have practically disappeared.”

  “But the sjambaks—”

  “Negligible.”

  “Well,” said Murphy, “I’d like to visit some of these ancient cities.”

  “I advise against it,” declared the Sultan. “They are shards, weathered stone. There are no inscriptions, no art. There is no stimulation in dead stone. Now. Tomorrow I will hear a report on hybrid soybean plantings in the Upper Kam District. You will want to be present.”

  Murphy’s suite matc
hed or even excelled his expectation. He had four rooms and a private garden enclosed by a thicket of bamboo. His bathroom walls were slabs of glossy actinolite, inlaid with cinnabar, jade, galena, pyrite and blue malachite, in representations of fantastic birds. His bedroom was a tent thirty feet high. Two walls were dark green fabric; a third was golden rust; the fourth opened upon the private garden.

  Murphy’s bed was a pink and yellow creation ten feet square, soft as cobweb, smelling of rose sandalwood. Carved black lacquer tubs held fruit; two dozen wines, liquors, syrups, essences flowed at a touch from as many ebony spigots.

  The garden centered on a pool of cool water, very pleasant in the hothouse climate of Singhalût. The only shortcoming was the lack of the lovely young servitors Murphy had envisioned. He took it upon himself to repair this lack, and in a shady wine-house behind the palace, called the Barangipan, he made the acquaintance of a girl-musician named Soek Panjoebang. He found her enticing tones of quavering sweetness from the gamelan, an instrument well-loved in Old Bali. Soek Panjoebang had the delicate features and transparent skin of Sumatra, the supple long limbs of Arabia and in a pair of wide and golden eyes a heritage from somewhere in Celtic Europe. Murphy bought her a goblet of frozen shavings, each a different perfume, while he himself drank white rice-beer. Soek Panjoebang displayed an intense interest in the ways of Earth, and Murphy found it hard to guide the conversation. “Weelbrrr,” she said. “Such a funny name, Weelbrrr. Do you think I could play the gamelan in the great cities, the great palaces of Earth?”

  “Sure. There’s no law against gamelans.”

  “You talk so funny, Weelbrrr. I like to hear you talk.”

  “I suppose you get kinda bored here in Singhalût?”

  She shrugged. “Life is pleasant, but it concerns with little things. We have no great adventures. We grow flowers, we play the gamelan.” She eyed him archly sidelong. “We love…We sleep…”

  Murphy grinned. “You run amok.”

  “No, no, no. That is no more.”