by Jack Vance
“Certainly. And you would find, should you converse with one of them, that they possess a sense of history, a racial heritage of folklore, and a culture well-adapted to their environment.”
“But how can one brain conceive the detail of a world? The leaves of each tree, the features of each man—”
“That would be tedious,” Laoome agreed. “My mind only broadly conceives, introduces the determinate roots into the hypostatic equations. Detail then evolves automatically.”
“You allowed me to destroy hundreds of these—men.”
Curious feelers searched his brain. Lanarck sensed Laoome’s amusement.
“The idea is repugnant? In a moment I shall dissolve the entire world…Still, if it pleases you, I can restore it as it was. See!”
Immediately the forest was unmarred, the village whole again, secure and peaceful in a small clearing.
Awareness came to Lanarck of a curious rigidity in the rapport he had established with the World-Thinker. Looking about, he saw that the great eyes had glazed, that the tremendous black body was twitching and jerking. Now Laoome’s dream-planet was changing. Lanarck leaned forward in fascination. The noble red trees had become gray rotten stalks and were swaying drunkenly. Others slumped and folded like columns of putty.
On the ground balls of black slime rolled about with vicious energy pursuing the villagers, who in terror fled anywhere, everywhere.
From the heavens came a rain of blazing pellets. The villagers were killed, but the black slime-things seemed only agonized. Blindly they lashed about, burrowed furiously into the heaving ground to escape the impacts. More suddenly than it had been created, the world vanished. Lanarck tore his gaze from the spot where the world had been. He looked about and found Laoome as before.
“Don’t be alarmed.” The thoughts came quietly. “The seizure is over. It occurs only seldom, and why it should be I do not know. I imagine that my brain, under the pressure of exact thought, lapses into these reflexive spasms for the sake of relaxation. This was a mild attack. The world on which I am concentrating is usually totally destroyed.”
The flow of soundless words stopped abruptly. Moments passed. Then thoughts gushed once more into Lanarck’s brain.
“Let me show you another planet—one of the most interesting I have ever conceived. For almost a million Earth years it has been developing in my mind.”
The space before Lanarck’s eyes quivered. Out in the imaginary void hung another planet. As before, it expanded until the features of the terrain assumed an earthly perspective. Hardly a mile in diameter, the world was divided around the equator by a belt of sandy desert. At one pole glimmered a lake, at the other grew a jungle of lush vegetation.
From this jungle now, as Lanarck watched, crept a semi-human shape. A travesty upon man, its face was long, chinless and furtive, with eyes beady and quick. The legs were unnaturally long; the shoulders and arms were undeveloped. It slunk to the edge of the desert, paused a moment, looking carefully in both directions, then began a mad dash through the sand to the lake beyond.
Halfway across, a terrible roar was heard. Over the close horizon bounded a dragon-like monster. With fearsome speed it pursued the fleeing man-thing, who outdistanced it and gained the edge of the desert by two hundred feet. When the dragon came to the limits of the sandy area, it halted and bellowed an eery mournful note which sent shivers along Lanarck’s spine. Casually now, the man-thing loped to the lake, threw himself flat and drank deeply.
“An experiment in evolution,” came Laoome’s thought. “A million years ago those creatures were men like yourself. This world is oddly designed. At one end is food, at the other drink. In order to survive, the ‘men’ must cross the desert every day or so. The dragon is prevented from leaving the desert by actinic boundaries. Hence, if the men can cross the desert, they are safe.
“You have witnessed how admirably they have adapted to their environment. The women are particularly fleet, for they have adjusted to the handicap of caring for their young. Sooner or later, of course, age overtakes them and their speed gradually decreases until finally they are caught and devoured.
“A curious religion and set of taboos have evolved here. I am worshipped as the primary god of Life, and Shillal, as they call the dragon, is the deity of Death. He, of course, is the basic concern of their lives and colors all their thoughts. They are close to elementals, these folk. Food, drink, and death are intertwined for them into almost one concept.
“They can build no weapons of metal against Shillal, for their world is not endowed with the raw materials. Once, a hundred thousand years ago, one of their chiefs contrived a gigantic catapult, to hurl a sharp-pointed tree-trunk at Shillal. Unluckily, the fibers of the draw-cord snapped and the chief was killed by the recoil. The priests interpreted this as a sign and—
“Look there! Shillal catches a weary old woman, sodden with water, attempting to return to the jungle!”
Lanarck witnessed the beast’s great gulping.
“To continue,” Laoome went on, “a taboo was created, and no further weapons were ever built.”
“But why have you forced upon these folk a million years of wretched existence?” asked Lanarck.
Laoome gave an untranslatable mental shrug. “I am just, and indeed benevolent,” he said. “These men worship me as a god. Upon a certain hillock, which they hold sacred, they bring their sick and wounded. There, if the whim takes me, I restore them to health. So far as their existence is concerned, they relish the span of their lives as much as you do yours.”
“Yet, in creating these worlds, you are responsible for the happiness of the inhabitants. If you were truly benevolent, why should you permit disease and terror to exist?”
Laoome again gave his mental shrug. “I might say that I use this universe of our own as a model. Perhaps there is another Laoome dreaming out the worlds we ourselves live on. When man dies of sickness, bacteria live. Dragon lives by eating man. When man eats, plants and animals die.”
Lanarck was silent, studiously preventing his thoughts from rising to the surface of his mind.
“I take it that Isabel May is upon neither of these planets?”
“That is correct.”
“I ask that you make it possible for me to communicate with her.”
“But I put her upon a world expressly to assure her safety from such molestation.”
“I believe that she would profit by hearing me.”
“Very well,” said Laoome. “In justice I should accord to you the same opportunity that I did her. You may proceed to this world. Remember, however, the risk is your own, exactly as it is for Isabel May. If you perish upon Markavvel, you are as thoroughly dead as you might be upon Earth. I can not play Destiny to influence either one of your lives.”
There was a hiatus in Laoome’s thoughts, a whirl of ideas too rapid for Lanarck to grasp. At last Laoome’s eyes focused upon him again. An instant of faintness as Lanarck felt knowledge forced into his brain.
As Laoome silently regarded him, it occurred to Lanarck that Laoome’s body, a great dome of black flesh, was singularly ill-adapted to life on the planet where he dwelt.
“You are right,” came the thoughts of Laoome. “From a Beyond unknown to you I came, banished from the dark planet Narfilhet, in whose fathomless black waters I swam. This was long ago, but even now I may not return.” Laoome lapsed once more into introspection.
Lanarck moved restlessly. Outside the wind tore past the building. Laoome continued silent, dreaming perhaps of the dark oceans of ancient Narfilhet. Lanarck impatiently launched a thought.
“How do I reach Markavvel? And how do I return?”
Laoome fetched himself back to the present. His eyes settled upon a point beside Lanarck. The aperture which led into his various imaginary spaces was now wrenched open for the third time. A little distance off in the void, a spaceboat drifted. Lanarck’s eyes narrowed with sudden interest.
“That’s a 45-G—my own ship!” h
e exclaimed.
“No, not yours. One like it. Yours is still outside.” The craft drew nearer, gradually floated within reach.
“Climb in,” said Laoome. “At present, you will find Isabel May in the city which lies at the apex of the triangular continent.”
“But how do I get back?”
“Aim your ship, when you leave Markavvel, at the brightest star visible. You will then break through the mental dimensions into this universe.”
Lanarck reached his arm into the imaginary universe and pulled the imagined spaceboat close to the aperture. He opened the port and gingerly stepped in as Laoome’s parting thoughts reached him.
“Should you fall into danger, I cannot modify the natural course of events. On the other hand, I will not intentionally place dangers in your way. If such befall you, it will be due solely to circumstance.”
III
Lanarck slammed shut the port, half-expecting the ship to dissolve under his feet. But the ship was solid enough. He looked back. The gap into his own universe had disappeared, leaving in its place a brilliant blue star. He found himself in space. Below glimmered the disk of Markavvel, much like other planets he had approached from the void. He tugged at the throttle, threw the nose hard over and down. Let the abstracts take care of themselves. The boat dropped down at Markavvel.
It seemed a pleasant world. A hot white sun hung off in space; blue oceans covered a large part of the surface. Among the scattered land masses he found the triangular continent. It was not large. There were mountains with green-forested slopes and a central plateau: a not un-Earthlike scene, and Lanarck did not feel the alien aura which surrounded most extra-terrestrial planets.
Sighting through his telescope Lanarck found the city, sprawling and white, at the mouth of a wide river. He sent his ship streaking down through the upper atmosphere, then slowed and leveled off thirty miles to sea. Barely skimming the sparkling blue waves, he flew toward the city.
A few miles to the left an island raised basalt cliffs against the ocean. In his line of sight there heaved up on the crest of a swell a floating black object. After an instant it disappeared into the trough: a ramshackle raft. Upon it a girl with tawny golden hair desperately battled sea-things which sought to climb aboard.
Lanarck dropped the ship into the water beside the raft. The wash threw the raft up and over and down on the girl.
Lanarck slipped through the port and dived into clear green water. He glimpsed only subhuman figures paddling downward, barely discernible. Bobbing to the surface, he swam to the raft, ducked under, grasped the girl’s limp form, pulled her up into the air.
For a moment he clung to the raft to catch his breath, while holding the girl’s head clear of the water. He sensed the return of the creatures from below. Dark forms rose in the shadow cast by the raft, and a clammy, long-fingered hand wound around his ankle. He kicked and felt his foot thud into something like a face. More dark forms came up from the depths. Lanarck measured the distance to his spaceboat. Forty feet. Too far. He crawled onto the raft, and pulled the girl after him. Leaning far out, he recovered the paddle and prepared to smash the first sea-thing to push above water. But instead, they swam in tireless circles twenty feet below.
The blade of the paddle had broken. Lanarck could not move the unwieldy bulk of the raft. The breeze, meanwhile, was easing the spaceboat ever farther away. Lanarck exerted himself another fifteen minutes, pushing against the water with the splintered paddle, but the gap increased. He cast down the paddle in disgust and turned to the girl who, sitting cross-legged, regarded him thoughtfully. For no apparent reason, Lanarck was reminded of Laoome in the dimness of his white building, on the windy world. All this, he thought, looking from clear-eyed girl to heaving sun-lit sea to highlands of the continent ahead, was an idea in Laoome’s brain.
He looked back at the girl. Her bright wheat-colored hair frothed around her head in ringlets, producing, thought Lanarck, a most pleasant effect. She returned his gaze for a moment, then, with jaunty grace, stood up.
She spoke to Lanarck who found to his amazement that he understood her. Then, remembering Laoome’s manipulation of his brain, extracting ideas, altering, instilling new concepts, he was not so amazed.
“Thank you for your help,” she said. “But now we are both in the same plight.”
Lanarck said nothing. He knelt and began to remove his boots.
“What will you do?”
“Swim,” he answered. The new language seemed altogether natural.
“The Bottom-people would pull you under before you went twenty feet.” She pointed into the water, which teemed with circling dark shapes. Lanarck knew she spoke the truth.
“You are of Earth also?” she asked, inspecting him carefully.
“Yes. Who are you and what do you know of Earth?”
“I am Jiro from the city yonder, which is Gahadion. Earth is the home of Isabel May, who came in a ship such as yours.”
“Isabel May arrived but an hour ago! How could you know about her?”
“‘An hour’?” replied the girl. “She has been here three months!” This last a little bitterly.
Lanarck reflected that Laoome controlled time in his universes as arbitrarily as he did space. “How did you come to be here on this raft?”
She grimaced toward the island. “The priests came for me. They live on the island and take people from the mainland. They took me but last night I escaped.”
Lanarck looked from the island to the city on the mainland. “Why do not Gahadion authorities control the priests?”
Her lips rounded to an O. “They are sacred to the Great God Laoome, and so inviolate.”
Lanarck wondered what unique evolutionary process Laoome had in progress here.
“Few persons thus taken return to the mainland,” she went on. “Those who win free, and also escape the Bottom-people, usually live in the wilderness. If they return to Gahadion they are molested by fanatics and sometimes recaptured by the priests.”
Lanarck was silent. After all, it concerned him little how these people fared. They were beings of fantasy, inhabiting an imaginary planet. And yet, when he looked at Jiro, detachment became easier to contemplate than to achieve.
“And Isabel May is in Gahadion?”
Jiro’s lips tightened. “No. She lives on the island. She is the Thrice-Adept, the High Priestess.”
Lanarck was surprised. “Why did they make her High Priestess?”
“A month after she arrived, the Hierarch, learning of the woman whose hair was the color of night, even as yours, tried to take her to Drefteli, the Sacred Isle, as a slave. She killed him with her weapon. Then when the lightnings of Laoome did not consume her, it was known that Laoome approved, and so she was made High Priestess in place of the riven Hierarch.”
The philosophy, so Lanarck reflected, would have sounded naive on Earth, where the gods were more covert in their supervision of human affairs.
“Is Isabel May a friend of yours—or your lover?” asked Jiro softly.
“Hardly.”
“Then what do you want with her?”
“I’ve come to take her back to Earth.” He looked dubiously across the ever-widening gap between the raft and his spaceboat. “That at least was my intention.”
“You shall see her soon,” said Jiro. She pointed to a long black galley approaching from the island. “The Ordained Ones. I am once more a slave.”
“Not yet,” said Lanarck, feeling for the bulk of his needle-beam.
The galley, thrust by the force of twenty long oars, lunged toward them. On the afterdeck stood a young woman, her black hair blowing in the wind. As her features became distinct, Lanarck recognized the face of Cardale’s photograph, now serene and confident.
Isabel May, looking from the silent two on the raft to the wallowing spaceboat a quarter-mile distant, seemed to laugh. The galley, manned by tall, golden-haired men, drew alongside.
“So Earth Intelligence pays me a visit?” She spo
ke in English. “How you found me, I cannot guess.” She looked curiously at Lanarck’s somber visage. “How?”
“I followed your trail, and then explained the situation to Laoome.”
“Just what is the situation?”
“I’d like to work out some kind of compromise to please everyone.”
“I don’t care whether I please anyone or not.”
“Understandable.”
The two studied each other. Isabel May suddenly asked, “What is your name?”
“Lanarck.”
“Just Lanarck? No rank? No first name?”
“Lanarck is enough.”
“Just as you like. I hardly know what to do with you. I’m not vindictive, and I don’t want to handicap your career. But ferrying you to your spaceboat would be rather quixotic. I’m comfortable here, and I haven’t the slightest intention of turning my property over to you.”
Lanarck reached for his needle-beam.
She watched him without emotion. “Wet needle-beams don’t work well.”
“This one is the exception.” Lanarck blasted the figurehead from the galley.
Isabel May’s expression changed suddenly. “I see that I’m wrong. How did you do it?”
“A personal device,” replied Lanarck. “Now I’ll have to request that you take me to my spaceboat.”
Isabel May stared at him a moment, and in those blue eyes Lanarck detected something familiar. Where had he seen eyes with that expression? On Fan, the Pleasure Planet? In the Magic Groves of Hycithil? During the raids on the slave-pens of Starlen? In Earth’s own macropolis Tran?
She turned and muttered to her boatswain, a bronzed giant, his golden hair bound back by a copper band. He bowed and moved away.
“Very well,” said Isabel May. “Come aboard.”
Jiro and Lanarck clambered over the carven gunwale. The galley swept ahead, foaming up white in its wake.
Isabel May turned her attention to Jiro, who sat looking disconsolately toward the island Drefteli. “You make friends quickly,” Isabel told Lanarck. “She’s very beautiful. What are you planning for her?”
