The Potter of Firsk and Other Stories

by Jack Vance

  “Words can’t conceal facts.”

  Hugh took an ominous step forward. “I will expunge you, you miserable sick pap-mouthed chicken.”

  Jean telephoned Godfrey Head. “Godfrey—I must see you.”

  “Sorry, Jean, can’t make it…I’m bound for a meeting of the Faculty Association. Two of the University Regents have become Crusaders; can you believe it?”

  “Godfrey—I’ve just talked to Donald. He’s fighting Hugh Bronny right now. We’ve got to help him.”

  The telephone line buzzed with silence. Then: “Help him? How?”

  “Let me come with you to your meeting…I take it you’re all anti-Bronny?”

  Godfrey Head snorted. “Naturally. But what can you do?”

  Jean laughed bitterly. “I’m several times a millionaire. There’s a lot I can do.”

  Hugh snatched out, caught hold of Don’s shoulder. Fingers dug into flesh like tongs into a bale of hay.

  A sword, thought Don, and he held a sword. He swung, hacked; the blade clanged against Hugh’s neck. Hugh reached out his other hand, seized the blade, snatched it from Don.

  “I will chop you to small atoms,” he chanted, “I’ll smear you into smoke, I’ll blow your memory out of time…” He lashed out with the sword. Don sprang back; the blade hissed past his chest, leaving a red groove.

  He thought sword, and held in his hand another sword.

  Hugh bellowed out a gust of mocking laughter. He took a stride forward, lashing with his sword.

  Godfrey Head diffidently addressed assembled members of the University Faculty Association.

  “A friend of mine wishes to speak to the meeting. I want to warn you in advance: be prepared for a surprise. What you will hear may strike you as unprecedented and unsettling. But, remember, we presume ourselves an intellectual elite, and we’ve got to shoulder the responsibilities which go with the status—or else admit ourselves to be fast-talking fourflushers.” His mild face glowed; he glared at the surprised audience as if they had challenged him.

  “This meeting was called to establish a position in regard to the Christian Crusade. What Jean Berwick will tell you bears on the subject.” He motioned Jean up to his side. “This is Jean Berwick. Listen carefully to what she says, and think carefully, because I think a time has come for us, and all other intelligent people, to make a choice.”

  Jean stood up on the podium, frail and intent. “My name is Jean Berwick. My husband Don Berwick died recently, in what might be called the first armed aggression of the Christian Crusade. He is dead, but he is still fighting—in spirit.” She smiled wanly. “In spirit, he needs our help.

  “I have a proposal to put to you—one of far greater scope than any of you had expected to hear tonight. Why do I come to you? Because you are the first large group of influential and intelligent people I could reach, and because you understand the implications of the Christian Crusade. I want to crush the Christian Crusade, grind it into oblivion. It is not enough to jail one or two demagogues; the Christian Crusade is an idea. We must organize a counter-idea, stronger and more inspiring, to smother it.

  “Exactly what is this so-called Christian Crusade? It is hate, enforced conformity, authoritarianism, race bigotry. Are the Crusaders Christian? They make a rite of submission to a malignant and vengeful God, who rewards his friends like a ward-boss and sentences his opponents to torture in Hell. Christ would turn away in disgust from this God. What is the counter-doctrine? A crusade for human dignity and the right—the obligation—to non-conformity, as passionate as Bronny’s crusade for his orthodoxy! A declaration of independence from religiosity, the assertion that men are masters of their own destinies. These are the issues: human values against superstition; pride and confidence against humility at the feet of idols, real or imaginary; civilization against barbarism; faith in man against faith in theosophical dogma.

  “What do I expect of you here tonight? I want you to rise to the challenge that our knowledge of right and wrong has set before us. I want you to endorse the manifesto I have outlined, to set it as a standard to which proud and intelligent men and women can rally.

  “We are on the verge of space; already we can tap unlimited energy. There is the outer threat of Communism, less dangerous than this internal threat symbolized by the Christian Crusade. These are problems and opportunities. How shall we meet them? With the mill-weight of the past around our necks? Or as proud, indomitable, self-reliant men of the future?

  “What is your answer? If you’re with me, clap…If you’re not—” she smiled. “Then you can hiss.”

  She waited. There was ten seconds silence, in which the churn of minds was palpable; honest enthusiasm tugging at conventional caution.

  There was a sudden sound of clapping. It grew in volume. It filled the hall.

  Jean relaxed against the podium. “I am not speaking to you. I’m not an orator. It’s Donald Berwick speaking through me. If Hugh Bronny symbolizes the past, then Donald Berwick is the symbol of the future.”

  Hugh laughed at Don. “Strike. You cannot cut me. Your sword is dull.”

  Don looked. The sword had turned to dull gray pewter. He saw a glint, ducked. Hugh’s blade whistled over his head.

  Gun, thought Don, and he held his .45 automatic.

  Hugh’s sword became a monstrous revolver, shooting yellow projectiles the size of hand-grenades.

  Don aimed, fired.

  There was discussion. A brisk sharp-featured man said, “Do you propose that we issue a Manifesto of Atheism? We can’t do that. There are many Christians among us, as well as Moslems, Jews, a few Buddhists, Orthodox Hindus—in addition to the free-thinkers, Unitarians, agnostics, and atheists.”

  “No,” said Jean, “I don’t ask you to endorse atheism, or any other belief. Because I don’t know. There’s an elemental mystery to the universe: the why of things. Everyone is free to speculate. I speak not for atheism, but against compulsory theism, or compulsory dogma of any kind.”

  “I see. In that case you have my whole-hearted support.”

  Godfrey Head addressed the chairman. “I move that we adjourn the meeting, that we immediately convene as the Society for Intellectual Freedom—with the purpose of drafting the Declaration Jean Berwick has proposed.”

  Don pulled the trigger of his gun. The bullet smashed into the barrel of Hugh’s great weapon. The projectile buzzed past Don’s ear, exploded somewhere behind.

  Hugh sprang forward, they grappled. One enormous arm circled Don’s throat. Hugh pressed his weight against Don, trying to force him over backwards.

  Don swung up a desperate fist, struck Hugh on the nose. He felt the cartilage crush; then Hugh’s weight pushed him back. He landed with a bone-shaking jar. Hugh’s hands went to Don’s throat.

  “I’ll tear your head off,” hissed Hugh. “I’ll strip you arm from arm…”

  The Society for Intellectual Freedom became known to the nation; to the world, on the following day. It was bitterly attacked by certain of the organized religions; by the Christian Crusade in particular, and hailed with joy by people uneasily aware that anxiety and uncertainty had driven them to accept doubtful dogma.

  And who was Jean Berwick? The wife of Lucky Don Berwick—who had been killed resisting the Christian Crusade!

  By a tremendous racking effort, Don threw Hugh off him. They rose to their feet, stood facing each other. Hugh had lost something of his over-powering confidence, but he was possibly more ferocious. Don grew larger, more solid.

  They both glowed with a cool blue light. The background had shifted; they stood in a valley between two ranges of low black hills.

  “Hugh,” said Don, “I could kill you with my hands…But I prefer to demolish you with my mind.”

  Jeffrey Hannevelt, President of the Unitarian Association, executive chairman of the Society for Intellectual Freedom, told reporters, “We could take Walter Spedelius, Casper Johnson, Gerald Henrick to court—we might get them indicted for conspiracy. But that’s not
enough. We’ve got to discredit them. We’re modern men, in charge of our own destiny. We’re moving into a new era of civilization, setting up a whole new culture-pattern. It’s up to us how it’ll turn out. How do we want it? The kind of world men dream and hope for? Or a world of groveling subservience to authority—political, religious, or otherwise? You know what the answer is. We can advance to a state where humanity proudly accepts and asserts responsibility for its own actions, where each man is proud to be a free-willed individual.”

  “Would you say, sir, that it’s a case of rational versus the irrational? Good versus bad?”

  “It’s too big to compress into words,” said Jeffrey Hannevelt. “To call it science against superstition would be about as close as you could come.”

  Hugh thought a war-club into his hands, and leapt forward to smite. Don retreated, thinking a glass dome over Hugh.

  The dome swiftly contracted, fitted around Hugh, then would go no more. There was a struggle, Don thinking another stronger glass skin around Hugh, Hugh thinking it away. The glass cracked, split. Hugh stepped out like a moth from the chrysalis.

  Hugh thought a flame-thrower; in the split-second before the flame reached him, Don thought a metal wall. The flame spattered back.

  Only Hugh’s upward glance warned Don; he thought himself a mile back; a lump of iron, the size of a small asteroid, crashed into his footsteps.

  On Hugh’s right hand, Don conceived a mass of uranium shaped like a bucket; on Hugh’s left hand he conceived a mass shaped like a plug. They darted together; Hugh saw them coming; they did not appear to be aimed at him. He stepped back with contempt.

  The pieces joined. Don thought himself twenty miles away.

  Thought is faster than radiation; thought is faster than any shock-wave. The great glow dazzled Don’s eyes; otherwise he was unharmed. Where Hugh had stood was a glowing crater.

  XXI

  On the terrace of Godfrey Head’s beach cottage ten miles south of Santa Barbara, Jean, Ivalee Trembath, Godfrey Head and his wife, Howard Rakowsky sat quietly. It was a warm evening. The Pacific lay flat and calm, glistening under a half-moon.

  “Did you see that?” said Jean suddenly.

  Godfrey Head looked around the sky. “What? Where?”

  “A flash! A great light!”

  “I didn’t see anything,” said Head.

  Rakowsky shook his head; Ivalee said nothing.

  “Might have been an atom-bomb explosion in Nevada.”

  The telephone rang; Godfrey Head answered. They heard his voice: “How many?…Really…That’s wonderful. It looks as if we did some good after all…”

  He returned to the terrace. “That was Claiborne in Los Angeles. The Christian Crusaders put on a monster rally out in Gardena.”

  “Really?”

  “Three hundred and twelve people showed up. There’s also a warrant out for Spedelius. Misappropriation of funds.”

  “I guess that does it,” said Rakowsky. “Funny how these movements come up—and seem so important and critical. Then suddenly when they break like a balloon, when they’re past, how weak and paltry they seem in retrospect.”

  Godfrey asked Jean, “What of the parapsychological research?”

  “We’ll get started up again. As soon as possible. We’ve barely scratched the surface. What is mind-stuff? That’s the basic question. Did it exist before man, before life on Earth? Did intelligence adapt itself to a pre-existing ocean of mind-stuff, or did intelligence generate mind-stuff? If there is intelligent alien life on other planets, do they use the same mind-stuff as we do? How do the material processes of the brain engage the non-material processes of the mind-stuff? What is the mechanism? Where’s the linkage?”

  Rakowsky held up his hand. “Enough to keep us busy several months right there.”

  “Of course it won’t be the same…I don’t want to go back to Orange City…Maybe we can build a research center somewhere up here, along the ocean…”

  She rose to her feet. “Excuse me, I’m going to take a walk down the beach.”

  “Like some company?” asked Head.

  “No thanks.”

  They watched her go. “Poor kid,” said Rakowsky. “She’s been through a lot.”

  Ivalee smiled. “Something very wonderful is about to happen to Jean.”

  Jean sat on a half-buried length of timber. She looked up—a man stood before her. She jumped to her feet, stepped back.

  “Don’t be frightened, Jean.”

  The blood was pounding in Jean’s ears. “I’m not frightened.”

  He took her hands, kissed her. His face felt warm; there was a stubble of beard on his cheeks.

  “Donald,” she sighed. “You feel real.”

  “I am real.”

  “I wish you were, Donald…”

  The surf roared quietly; the stars fulfilled the ancient patterns. Her voice sounded thin and far away.

  “Sit down. I’ll explain. It won’t take long.”

  She slowly sat on the log. “How—how long can you stay?”

  “Till I die.”

  “But—you’re already dead.”

  “And now I’m alive again.”

  “Don, don’t tease me, if it’s not true.”

  “It’s true. I died. I was a thought—hard and intense and definite. I materialized. Remember? But I was not hard and definite enough—not true matter. I slipped back. Then as the thought lost intensity I became weaker. Until I fought Hugh Bronny. At first he was very strong—a giant.”

  Jean nodded. “At the same time we were fighting the Crusaders—and they were strong at first. But we won—just tonight.”

  “Tonight I killed Hugh Bronny.”

  Jean sighed, laughed wearily. “A dead man being killed.”

  “He’s not utterly destroyed. Because the cycle goes on in the after-life. What’s left of Hugh is the thought of his thought—a poor shambling wraith.”

  “I don’t understand, Donald.”

  “I don’t either…But suddenly I was strong—intense as I never had been before. More than anything I wanted to be with you. And here I am.”

  “Are you real? All of you? Not just your outside feel and look?”

  “Look at me—touch me.”

  She did. “Mightn’t it be—well, illusion?”

  “I am real. Perhaps because it’s the simplest way. A material body must move; what’s more rational than muscles to move it? Material muscles. And what more rational than material blood to nourish the muscles? And what’s more rational than functioning material lungs and a functioning material stomach to feed the blood? Is there an easier way to simulate a normal human being than to be a human being? There’s nothing mystic or occult involved…It’s common sense. Carbon atoms crystallize into a diamond, not because a diamond is pretty or because a diamond has occult significance—but because that’s the way carbon atoms fit together. The simplest way. The same way with me.”

  “Don—can you stay here—forever?”

  “Until I die. I’m material now.”

  Jean looked up the beach, toward the lights of the beach-cottage. “Shall we go back—and tell the others?”

  “Let’s not…Where’s your car?”

  “Up the road.”

  “Let’s go.”

  “But Howard—Godfrey—Ivalee—”

  “We’ll telephone from Orange City.”

  Jean laughed softly, patted his cheek. “Shall I get my suitcase?”

  “You’d better get your check-book,” said Don. “I should have materialized a satchel-full of twenty-dollar bills.”

  “That’s counterfeiting,” said Jean. “How are we ever going to explain this?”

  “My return? Lucky Don Berwick staggered out of the burning house, had an attack of amnesia, finally came to himself.”

  “It’ll have to do.” She turned away. “Can I trust you not to de-materialize?”

  “Yes…I’ll wait in the car.”

  Five minutes later she retur
ned to the car with her suitcase. “Donald?” She looked into the car. “Don! Where are you?” A sudden terrible fear loomed in her brain.

  “Right behind you. What’s the trouble?”

  “Nothing.” She got in, slammed the door. “I was just afraid.”

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of.” He started the motor, turned on the lights, and the car moved slowly along the driveway, out to the highway, and turned south toward Los Angeles. It accelerated; the tail-lights became a pair of red dots, a glimmer, and then were lost.

  Sail 25

  I

  Henry Belt came limping into the conference room, mounted the dais, settled himself at the desk. He looked once around the room: a swift bright glance which, focusing nowhere, treated the eight young men who faced him to an almost insulting disinterest. He reached in his pocket, brought forth a pencil and a flat red book, which he placed on the desk. The eight young men watched in absolute silence. They were much alike: healthy, clean, smart, their expressions identically alert and wary. Each had heard legends of Henry Belt, each had formed his private plans and private determinations.

  Henry Belt seemed a man of a different species. His face was broad, flat, roped with cartilage and muscle, with skin the color and texture of bacon rind. Coarse white grizzle covered his scalp, his eyes were crafty slits, his nose a misshapen lump. His shoulders were massive, his legs short and gnarled: as he sat before the eight young men he seemed like a horned toad among a group of dapper young frogs.

  “First of all,” said Henry Belt, with a gap-toothed grin, “I’ll make it clear that I don’t expect you to like me. If you do I’ll be surprised and displeased. It will mean that I haven’t pushed you hard enough.”

  He leaned back in his chair, surveyed the silent group. “You’ve heard stories about me. Why haven’t they kicked me out of the service? Incorrigible, arrogant, dangerous Henry Belt. Drunken Henry Belt. (This last of course is slander. Henry Belt has never been drunk in his life.) Why do they tolerate me? For one simple reason: out of necessity. No one wants to take on this kind of job. Only a man like Henry Belt can stand up to it: year after year in space, with nothing to look at but a half-dozen round-faced young scrubs. He takes them out, he brings them back. Not all of them, and not all of those who come back are space-men today. But they’ll all cross the street when they see him coming. Henry Belt? you say. They’ll turn pale or go red. None of them will smile. Some of them are high-placed now. They could kick me loose if they chose. Ask them why they don’t. Henry Belt is a terror, they’ll tell you. He’s wicked, he’s a tyrant. Cruel as an axe, fickle as a woman. But a voyage with Henry Belt blows the foam off the beer. He’s ruined many a man, he’s killed a few, but those that come out of it are proud to say, I trained with Henry Belt!