The World-Thinker and Other Stories

by Jack Vance

  “She’s one of your escaped slaves. I don’t have any plans. This place belongs to Laoome; he makes all plans. I’m interested only in getting you out. If you don’t want to come back to Earth, give me the document which you brought with you, and stay here as long as you like.”

  “Sorry. The document stays with me. I don’t carry it on my person, so please don’t try to search me.”

  “That sounds quite definite,” said Lanarck. “Do you know what’s in the document?”

  “More or less. It’s like a blank check on the wealth of the world.”

  “That’s a good description. As I understand this sorry affair, you became angry at the treatment accorded your father.”

  “That’s a very quiet understatement.”

  “Would money help soothe your anger?”

  “I don’t want money. I want revenge. I want to grind faces into the mud; I want to kick people and make their lives miserable.”

  “Still…don’t dismiss money. It’s nice to be rich. You have your life ahead of you. I don’t imagine you want to spend it here, inside Laoome’s head.”

  “Very true.”

  “So name a figure.”

  “I can’t measure anger and grief in dollars.”

  “Why not? A million? Ten million? A hundred million?”

  “Stop there. I can’t count any higher.”

  “That’s your figure.”

  “What good will money do me? They’ll take me back to Nevada.”

  “No. I’ll give you my personal guarantee of this.”

  “Meaningless. I know nothing about you.”

  “You’ll learn during the trip back to Earth.”

  Isabel May said: “Lanarck, you are persuasive. If the truth be known, I’m homesick.” She turned away and stood looking over the ocean. Lanarck stood watching her. She was undeniably attractive and he found it difficult to take his eyes from her. But as he settled on the bench beside Jiro, he felt a surge of a different, stronger, feeling. It irritated him, and he tried to put it aside.

  IV

  Wallowing in the swells, the spaceboat lay dead ahead. The galley scudded through the water at a great rate, and the oarsmen did not slacken speed as they approached. Lanarck’s eyes narrowed; he jumped upright shouting orders. The galley, unswerving, plowed into the spaceboat, grinding it under the metal-shod keel. Water gushed in through the open port; the spaceboat shuddered and sank, a dark shadow plummeting into green depths.

  “Too bad,” remarked Isabel. “On the other hand, this puts us more on an equal footing. You have a needle-beam, I have a spaceboat.”

  Lanarck silently seated himself. After a moment he spoke. “Where is your own needle-beam?”

  “I blew it up trying to recharge it from the spaceboat generators.”

  “And where is your spaceboat?”

  Isabel laughed at this. “Do you expect me to tell you?”

  “Why not? I wouldn’t maroon you here.”

  “Nevertheless, I don’t think I’ll tell you.”

  Lanarck turned to Jiro. “Where is Isabel May’s spaceboat?”

  Isabel spoke in a haughty voice: “As High Priestess to Almighty Laoome, I command you to be silent!”

  Jiro looked from one to the other. She made up her mind. “It is on the plaza of the Malachite Temple in Gahadion.”

  Isabel was silent. “Laoome plays tricks,” she said at last. “Jiro has taken a fancy to you. You’re obviously interested in her.”

  “Laoome will not interfere,” said Lanarck.

  She laughed bitterly. “That’s what he told me—and look! I’m High Priestess. He also told me he wouldn’t let anyone come to Markavvel from the outside to molest me. But you are here!”

  “My intention is not to molest you,” said Lanarck curtly. “We can as easily be friends as enemies.”

  “I don’t care to be a friend of yours. And as an enemy, you are no serious problem. Now!” Isabel called, as the tall boatswain came near.

  The boatswain whirled on Lanarck. Lanarck twisted, squirmed, heaved, and the golden-haired boatswain sprawled back into the bilge, where he lay dazed.

  A soft hand brushed Lanarck’s thigh. He looked around, smoothing his lank black hair, and found Isabel May smiling into his face. His needle-beam dangled from her fingers.

  Jiro arose from the bench. Before Isabel could react, Jiro had pushed a hand into her face, and with the other seized the needle-beam. She pointed the weapon at Isabel.

  “Sit down,” said Jiro.

  Weeping with rage, Isabel fell back upon the bench.

  Jiro, her young face flushed and happy, backed over to the thwart, needle-beam leveled.

  Lanarck stood still.

  “I will take charge now,” said Jiro. “You—Isabel! Tell your men to row toward Gahadion!”

  Sullenly Isabel gave the order. The long black galley turned its bow toward the city.

  “This may be sacrilege,” Jiro observed to Lanarck. “But then I was already in trouble for escaping from Drefteli.”

  “What do you plan in this new capacity of yours?” Lanarck inquired, moving closer.

  “First, to try this weapon on whomever thinks he can take it away from me.” Lanarck eased back. “Secondly—but you’ll see soon enough.”

  White-tiered Gahadion rapidly drew closer across the water.

  Isabel sulked on the bench. Lanarck had little choice but to let matters move on their own momentum. He relaxed against a thwart, watching Jiro from the corner of his eye. She stood erect behind the bench where Isabel sat, her clear eyes looking over the leaping sparkles of the ocean. Breeze whipped her hair behind and pressed the tunic against her slim body. Lanarck heaved a deep sad sigh. This girl with the wheat-colored hair was unreal. She would vanish into oblivion as soon as Laoome lost interest in the world Markavvel. She was less than a shadow, less than a mirage, less than a dream. Lanarck looked over at Isabel, the Earth girl, who glared at him with sullen eyes. She was real enough.

  They moved up the river and toward the white docks of Gahadion. Lanarck rose to his feet. He looked over the city, surveyed the folk on the dock who were clad in white, red and blue tunics, then turned to Jiro. “I’ll have to take the weapon now.”

  “Stand back or I’ll—” Lanarck took the weapon from her limp grasp. Isabel watched in sour amusement.

  A dull throbbing sound, like the pulse of a tremendous heart, came down from the heavens. Lanarck cocked his head, listening. He scanned the sky. At the horizon appeared a strange cloud, like a band of white-gleaming metal, swelling in rhythm to the celestial throbbing. It lengthened with miraculous speed, until in all directions the horizon was encircled. The throb became a vast booming. The air itself seemed heavy, ominous. A terrible idea struck Lanarck. He turned and yelled to the awestruck oarsmen who were trailing their oars in the river.

  “Quickly—get to the docks!”

  They jerked at their oars, frantic, yet the galley moved no faster. The water of the river had become oily smooth, almost syrupy. The boat inched close to the dock. Lanarck was grimly aware of the terrified Isabel on one side of him, Jiro on the other.

  “What is happening?” whispered Isabel. Lanarck watched the sky. The cloud-band of bright metal quivered and split into another which wabbled, bouncing just above.

  “I hope I’m wrong,” said Lanarck, “but I suspect that Laoome is going mad. Look at our shadows!” He turned to look at the sun, which jerked like a dying insect, vibrating through aimless arcs. His worst fears were realized.

  “It can’t be!” cried Isabel. “What will happen?”

  “Nothing good.”

  The galley lurched against a pier. Lanarck helped Isabel and Jiro up to the dock, then followed.

  Masses of tall golden-haired people milled in panic along the avenue.

  “Lead me to the spaceboat!” Lanarck had to shout to make himself heard over the tumult of the city. His mind froze at a shocking thought: what would happen to Jiro?

  He pus
hed the thought down. Isabel pulled at him urgently. “Come, hurry!”

  Taking Jiro’s hand, he ran off after Isabel toward the black-porticoed temple at the far end of the avenue.

  A constriction twisted the air; down came a rain of warm red globules: small crimson jellyfish which stung naked flesh like nettles. The din from the city reached hysterical pitch. The red plasms increased to become a cloud of pink slime, now oozing ankle-deep on the ground.

  Isabel tripped and fell headlong in the perilous mess. She struggled until Lanarck helped her to her feet.

  They continued toward the temple, Lanarck supporting both girls and keeping an uneasy eye on the structures to either side.

  The rain of red things ceased, but the streets flowed with ooze.

  The sky shifted color—but what color? It had no place in any spectrum. The color only a mad god could conceive.

  The red slime curdled and fell apart like quicksilver, to jell in an instant to millions upon millions of bright blue manikins three inches high. They ran, hopped, scuttled; the streets were a quaking blue carpet of blank-faced little homunculi. They clung to Lanarck’s garments, they ran up his legs like mice. He trod them under, heedless to their squeals.

  The sun, jerking in small spasmodic motions, slowed, lost its glare, became oblate. It developed striations and, as the stricken population of Gahadion quieted in awe, the sun changed to a segmented white slug, as long as five suns, as wide as one. It writhed its head about and stared down through the strange-colored sky at Markavvel.

  In a delirium, the Gahadionites careened along the wide avenues. Lanarck and the two girls almost were trod under as they fought past a cross-street.

  In a small square, beside a marble fountain, the three found refuge. Lanarck had reached a state of detachment: a conviction that this experience was a nightmare.

  A blue man-thing pulled itself into his hair. It was singing in a small clear baritone. Lanarck set it upon the ground. His mind grew calmer. This was no nightmare; this was reality, however the word could be interpreted! Haste! The surge of people had passed; the way was relatively open. “Let’s go!” He pulled at the two girls who had been watching the slug which hung across the sky.

  As they started off, there came the metamorphosis Lanarck had been expecting, and dreading. The matter of Gahadion, and all Markavvel, altered into unnatural substances. The buildings of white marble became putty, slumped beneath their own weight. The Malachite Temple, an airy dome on green malachite pillars, sagged and slid to a sodden lump. Lanarck urged the gasping girls to greater speed.

  The Gahadionites no longer ran; there was no destination. They stood staring up, frozen in horror by the glittering slug in the sky. A voice screamed: “Laoome, Laoome!” Other voices took up the cry: “Laoome, Laoome!”

  If Laoome heard, he gave no sign.

  Lanarck kept an anxious eye on these folk, dreading lest they also, as dream-creatures, alter to shocking half-things. For should they change, so would Jiro. Why take her to the spaceboat? She could not exist outside the mind of Laoome…But how could he let her go?

  The face of Markavvel was changing. Black pyramids sprouted through the ground and, lengthening tremendously, darted upward, to become black spikes, miles high.

  Lanarck saw the spaceboat, still sound and whole, a product of more durable mind-stuff, perhaps, than Markavvel itself. Tremendous processes were transpiring beneath his feet, as if the core of the planet itself were degenerating. Another hundred yards to the spaceboat! “Faster!” he panted to the girls.

  All the while they ran, he watched the folk of Gahadion. Like a cold wind blowing on his brain, he knew that the change had come. He almost slowed his steps for despair. The Gahadionites themselves knew. They staggered in unbelieving surprise, regarding their hands, feeling their faces.

  Too late! Unreasonably Lanarck had hoped that once in space, away from Markavvel, Jiro might retain her identity. But too late! A blight had befallen the Gahadionites. They clawed their shriveling faces, tottered and fell, their shrunken legs unable to support them.

  In anguish Lanarck felt one of the hands he was holding become hard and wrinkled. As her legs withered, he felt her sag. He paused and turned, to look sadly upon what had been Jiro.

  The ground beneath his feet lurched. Around him twisted dying Gahadionites. Above, dropping through the weird sky, came the slug. Black spikes towered tremendously over his head. Lanarck heeded none of these. Before him stood Jiro—a Jiro gasping and reeling in exhaustion, but a Jiro sound and golden still! Dying on the marble pavement was the shriveled dream-thing he had known as Isabel May. Taking Jiro’s hand, he turned and made for the spaceboat.

  Hauling back the port, he pushed Jiro inside. Even as he touched the hull, he realized that the spaceboat was changing also. The cold metal had acquired a palpitant life of its own. Lanarck slammed shut the port, and, heedless of fracturing cold thrust-tubes, gushed power astern.

  Off careened the spaceboat, dodging through the forest of glittering black spines, now hundreds of miles tall, swerving a thousand miles to escape the great slug falling inexorably to the surface of Markavvel. As the ship darted free into space, Lanarck looked back to see the slug sprawled across half a hemisphere. It writhed, impaled on the tall black spikes.

  Lanarck drove the spaceboat at full speed toward the landmark star. Blue and luminous it shone, the only steadfast object in the heavens. All else poured in turbulent streams through black space: motes eddying in a pool of ink.

  Lanarck looked briefly toward Jiro, and spoke. “Just when I decided that nothing else could surprise me, Isabel May died, while you, Jiro the Gahadionite, are alive.”

  “I am Isabel May. You knew already.”

  “I knew, yes, because it was the only possibility.” He put his hand against the hull. The impersonal metallic feel had altered to a warm vitality. “Now, if we escape from this mess, it’ll be a miracle.”

  Changes came quickly. The controls atrophied; the ports grew dull and opaque, like cartilage. Engines and fittings became voluted organs; the walls were pink moist flesh, pulsing regularly. From outside came a sound like the flapping of pinions; about their feet swirled dark liquid. Lanarck, pale, shook his head. Isabel pressed close to him.

  “We’re in the stomach of—something.”

  Isabel made no answer.

  A sound like a cork popped from a bottle, a gush of gray light. Lanarck had guided the spaceboat aright; it had continued into the sane universe and its own destruction.

  The two Earth-creatures found themselves stumbling on the floor of Laoome’s dwelling. At first they could not comprehend their deliverance; safety seemed but another shifting of scenes.

  Lanarck regained his equilibrium. He helped Isabel to her feet; together they surveyed Laoome, who was still in the midst of his spasm. Rippling tremors ran along his black hide, the saucer eyes were blank and glazed.

  “Let’s go!” whispered Isabel.

  Lanarck silently took her arm; they stepped out on the glaring wind-whipped plain. There, the two spaceboats, just as before. Lanarck guided Isabel to his craft, opened the port and motioned her inside. “I’m going back for one moment.”

  Lanarck locked the power-arm. “Just to guard against any new surprises.”

  Isabel said nothing.

  Walking around to the spaceboat in which Isabel May had arrived, Lanarck similarly locked the mechanism. Then he crossed to the white concrete structure.

  Isabel listened, but the moaning of the wind drowned out all other sounds. The chatter of a needle-beam? She could not be sure.

  Lanarck emerged from the building. He climbed into the boat and slammed the port. They sat in silence as the thrust-tubes warmed, nor did they speak as he threw over the power-arm and the boat slanted off into the sky.

  Not until they were far off in space did either of them speak.

  Lanarck looked toward Isabel. “How did you know of Laoome?”

  “Through my father. Twenty years ag
o he did Laoome some trifling favor—killed a lizard which had been annoying Laoome, or something of the sort.”

  “And that’s why Laoome shielded you from me by creating the dream Isabel?”

  “Yes. He told me you were coming down looking for me. He arranged that you should meet a purported Isabel May, that I might assess you without your knowledge.”

  “Why don’t you look more like the photograph?”

  “I was furious; I’d been crying; I was practically gnashing my teeth. I certainly hope I don’t look like that.”

  “How about your hair?”

  “It’s bleached.”

  “Did the other Isabel know your identity?”

  “I don’t think so. No, I know she didn’t. Laoome equipped her with my brain and all its memories. She actually was I.”

  Lanarck nodded. Here was the source of the inklings of recognition. He said thoughtfully: “She was very perceptive. She said that you and I were, well, attracted to each other. I wonder if she was right.”

  “I wonder.”

  “There will be time to consider the subject…One last point: the documents, with the override.”

  Isabel laughed cheerfully. “There aren’t any documents.”

  “No documents?”

  “None. Do you care to search me?”

  “Where are the documents?”

  “Document, in the singular. A slip of paper. I tore it up.”

  “What was on the paper?”

  “The over-ride. I’m the only person alive who knows it. Don’t you think I should keep the secret to myself?”

  Lanarck reflected a moment. “I’d like to know. That kind of knowledge is always useful.”

  “Where is the hundred million dollars you promised me?”

  “It’s back on Earth. When you get there you can use the over-ride.”

  Isabel laughed. “You’re a most practical man. What happened to Laoome?”

  “Laoome is dead.”

  “How?”

  “I destroyed him. I thought of what we just went through. His dream-creatures—were they real? They seemed real to me, and to themselves. Is a person responsible for what happens during a nightmare? I don’t know. I obeyed my instincts, or conscience, whatever it’s called, and killed him.”