The World-Thinker and Other Stories

by Jack Vance

  They rolled the gorgeous hulk into the hopper. Shorn jumped up beside the operator, pointed. “Up there where they’re pouring that abutment.”

  They swept diagonally up the great north wall, to where a pour-crew worked beside a receptor designed to receive concrete from loaded hoppers. Shorn jumped four feet from the hopper to the deck, went to the foreman. “There’s a hold-up here; take your crew down to B-142 Pilaster and work there for a while.”

  The foreman grumbled, protested. The receptor was half full of concrete.

  Shorn raised his voice impatiently. “Leave it set. I’ll send a lift up to move the whole thing.”

  The foreman turned away, barked ill-naturedly to his men. They moved with exaggerated slowness. Shorn stood tautly while they gathered their equipment and trooped down the ramp.

  He turned to the lift operator. “Now.”

  The bedizened body rolled into the pour.

  Shorn guided the dump-hose into position, pulled the trigger. Gray slush pressed down the staring face that had known so much power.

  Shorn sighed slightly. “That’s good. Now—we’ll get the crew back on the job.”

  At Pilaster B-142 Shorn signaled the foreman, who glowered belligerently. Shorn was a mere draughtsman, therefore a fumbler and impractical. “You can go back to work up above now.”

  Before the foreman could find words for an adequate retort, Shorn was back in the hopper.

  In the yard he found Geskamp standing at the center of an apprehensive group.

  “Nollinrude’s gone.” He looked at the body of the trucker who had caused the original outburst. “Somebody will have to take him home.”

  He surveyed the group, trying to gauge their strength, and found nothing to reassure him. Eyes shifted sullenly from his. With an empty feeling in his stomach Shorn knew that the fact of the killing could not be disposed of as easily as the body.

  Shorn once more scanned the surroundings. A great blank wall rose immediately to the east; to the north were the Alban Hills, to the south the empty Swanscomb Valley.

  Probably these few people were still alone in their knowledge of the killing. He looked from face to face. “A lot of people to keep a secret. If one of us talks—even to his brother or his friend or his wife—then there’s no more secret. You all remember Vernisaw Knerwig?”

  A nervous mutter assured him that they did: that their urgent hope was to disassociate themselves from any part of the episode.

  Geskamp’s face was working irritably. Shorn remembered that Geskamp was nominally in charge and was possibly sensitive to any usurpations of his authority. “Yes, Mr. Geskamp? Did you have something to add?”

  Geskamp drew back his heavy lips, grinning like a big blond dog. With an effort he restrained himself. “You’re doing fine.”

  Shorn turned back to the others. “You men are leaving the job now. You won’t be questioned by the Teleks. Naturally they’ll know that Nollinrude has disappeared, but I hope they won’t know where. Just in case you are asked—Nollinrude came and went. That’s all you know. Another thing.” He paused weightily. “If any of us becomes wealthy and the Teleks become full of knowledge—this person will regret that he sold his voice.” And he added, as if it were an inconsequential matter, “There’s a group to cope with situations of this sort.” He looked at Geskamp, but Geskamp kept stonily silent. “Now, I’ll get your names—for future reference. One at a time—”

  Twenty minutes later a carry-all floated off toward Tran.

  “Well,” said Geskamp bitterly, “I’m up to my neck in it now. Is that what you wanted?”

  “I didn’t want it this way. You’re in a tough spot. So am I. With luck we’ll come through. But—just in case—tonight we’ll have to do what I was leading up to.”

  Geskamp squinted angrily. “Now I’m to be your cat’s-paw. In what?”

  “You can sign a requisition. You can send a pair of lifts to the explosives warehouse—”

  Geskamp’s bushy eyebrows took on an odd reverse tilt. “Explosives? How much?”

  “A ton of mitrox.”

  Geskamp said in a tone of hushed respect: “That’s enough to blow the stadium ten miles high!”

  Shorn grinned. “Exactly. You’d better get that requisition off right now. Then you have the key to the generator room. Tomorrow the main pile is going in. Tonight you and I will arrange the mitrox under the piers.”

  Geskamp’s mouth hung open. “But—”

  Shorn’s dour face became almost charming. “I know. Wholesale murder. Not sporting. I agree with you. A sneak attack. I agree. Stealth and sneak attacks and back-stabbing are our weapons. We don’t have any others. None at all.”

  “But—why are you so confident of bloodshed?”

  Shorn suddenly exploded in anger. “Man, get your head up out of the sand. When will we have another chance of getting every single one without exception?”

  Geskamp jumped out of the company airboat assigned to his use, stalked with a set face around the arena toward the construction office. Above him rose two hundred feet of sheer concrete, glowing in the morning sun. In his mind’s eye Geskamp saw the dark cartons that he and Shorn had carried below like moles on the night previous; he still moved with reluctance and uncertainty, carried only by Shorn’s fire and direction.

  Now the trap was set. A single coded radio signal would pulverize the new concrete, fling a molten gout miles into the air, pound a gigantic blow at the earth.

  Geskamp’s honest face became taut as he wrestled with his conscience. Had he been too malleable? Think what a revenge the Teleks would take for such a disaster! Still, if the Teleks were as terrible a threat to human freedom as Shorn had half made him believe, then the mass killing was a deed to be resolutely carried through, like the killing of dangerous beasts. And certainly the Teleks only paid lip-service to human laws. His mind went to the death of Forence Nollinrude. In ordinary events there would be an inquiry. Nollinrude had killed the trucker; Geskamp, swept by overwhelming rage and pity, had killed the Telek. At the worst a human court would have found him guilty of manslaughter, and no doubt would have granted probation. But with a Telek—Geskamp’s blood chilled in his veins. Maybe there was something to Shorn’s extreme methods after all; certainly the Teleks could be controlled by no normal methods of law.

  He rounded the corner of the tool-room, noted an unfamiliar face within. Good. Home office had acted without inquisitiveness; the shifting of employees had interested no one with authority to ask questions.

  He looked into the expediter’s room. “Where’s the draughtsman?” he asked Cole, the steel detailer.

  “Never showed up this morning, Mr. Geskamp.”

  Geskamp cursed under his breath. Just like Shorn, getting him into trouble, then ducking out, leaving him to face it. Might be better to come clean with the whole incident; after all it had been an accident, a fit of blood-rage. The Teleks could understand so much, surely.

  He turned his head. Something flickered at the edge of his vision. He looked sharply. Something like a big black bug whisked up behind a shelf of books. Big cockroach, thought Geskamp. A peculiar cockroach.

  He attacked his work in a vicious humor, and foremen around the job asked themselves wonderingly what had got into Geskamp. Three times during the morning he looked into the office for Shorn, but Shorn had made no appearance.

  And once, as he ducked under a low soffit on one of the upper decks, a black object darted up behind him. He jerked his eyes around, but the thing had disappeared under the beams.

  “Funny bug,” he said to the new form foreman, whom he was showing around the job.

  “I didn’t see it, Mr. Geskamp.”

  Geskamp returned to the office, obtained Shorn’s home address—a hotel in the Marmion Tower—and put in a visiphone call.

  Shorn was not in.

  Geskamp turned away, almost bumped into the feet of a Telek standing in the air before him: a thin somber man with silver hair and oil-black eyes. He
wore two tones of gray, with a sapphire clasp at the collar of his cape, and the usual Telek slippers of black velvet.

  Geskamp’s heart started thudding; his hands became moist. The moment he had been dreading. Where was Shorn?

  “You are Geskamp?”

  “Yes,” said Geskamp. “I—”

  He was picked up, hurled through the air. Far, fleeting below, went the stadium, Swanscomb Valley, the entire countryside. Tran was a gray and black honeycomb, he was in the sunny upper air, hurtling with unthinkable speed. Wind roared past his ears, but he felt no pressure on his skin, no tear at his clothes.

  The ocean spread blue below, and something glittered ahead—a complex edifice of shiny metal, glass and bright color. It floated high in the sunny air, with no support above or below.

  Geskamp saw a glitter, a flash; he was standing on a floor of glass threaded and drawn with strands of green and gold. The thin gray man sat behind a table in a yellow chair. The room was flooded with sunlight; Geskamp was too dazed to notice further details.

  The Telek said, “Geskamp, tell me what you know of Forence Nollinrude.”

  It appeared to Geskamp that the Telek was watching him with superior knowledge, as if any lie would be instantly known, dismissed with grim humor. He was a poor liar to begin with. He looked around for a place to rest his big body. A chair appeared.

  “Nollinrude?” He seated himself. “I saw him yesterday. What about him?”

  “Where is he now?”

  Geskamp forced a painful laugh. “How would I know?”

  A sliver of glass darted through the air, stung the back of Geskamp’s neck. He rose to his feet, startled and angry.

  “Sit down,” said the Telek, in a voice of unnatural coolness.

  Geskamp slowly sat down. A kind of faintness dimmed his vision, his brain seemed to move away, seemed to watch dispassionately.

  “Where is Nollinrude?”

  Geskamp held his breath. A voice said, “He’s dead. Down in the concrete.”

  “Who killed him?”

  Geskamp listened to hear what the voice would say.

  III

  Shorn sat in a quiet tavern in that section of Tran where the old suddenly changes to the new. South were the sword-shaped towers, the neat intervening plazas and parks; north spread the ugly crust of three-and four-story apartments gradually blending into the industrial district.

  A young woman with straight brown hair sat across the table from Shorn. She wore a brown cloak without ornament; looking into her face there was little to notice but her eyes—large, brown-black, somber; the rest of her face was without accent.

  Shorn was drinking strong tea, his thin dark face in repose.

  The young woman seemed to see an indication that the surface calm was false. She put out her hand, rested it on his, a quick exquisite gesture, the first time she had touched him in the three months of their acquaintance. “How could you have done differently?” Her voice became mildly argumentative. “What could you have done?”

  “Taken the whole half-dozen underground. Kept Geskamp with me.”

  “How would that have helped? There’ll be a certain number of deaths, a certain amount of destruction—how many and how much is out of our hands. Is Geskamp a valuable man?”

  “No. He’s a big hard-working likeable fellow, hardly devious or many-tracked enough to be of use. And I don’t think he would have come with me. He was to the point of open rebellion as it was—the type who resents infringement.”

  “It’s not impossible that your arrangements are still effective.”

  “Not a chance. The only matter for speculation is how many the Teleks destroy and whom.”

  The young woman leaned somberly back in her chair, stared straight ahead. “If nothing else, this episode marks a new place in the—in the—I don’t know what to call it. Struggle? Campaign? War?”

  “Call it war.”

  “We’re almost out in the open. Public opinion may be aroused, swung to our side.”

  Shorn shook his head gloomily. “The Teleks have bought most of the police, and I suspect that they own the big newspapers, through fronts, of course. No, we can’t expect much public support yet. We’ll be called Nihilists, Totalitarists—”

  The young woman quoted Turgenev. “‘If you want to annoy an opponent thoroughly or even harm him, you reproach him with every defect or vice you are conscious of in yourself.’”

  “It’s just as well.” Shorn laughed bitterly. “Perhaps it’s one of our big advantages, our freedom to merge into the masses. If everyone were anti-Telek, the Teleks would have an easy job. Kill everybody.”

  “Then they’d have to do all their own work.”

  “That’s right, too.”

  She made a fluttering gesture, her voice was strained. “It’s a blood penance on our century, on humanity—”

  Shorn snorted. “Mysticism.”

  She went on as if she had not heard. “If men were to develop from sub-apes a thousand times—each of those thousand rises would show the same phases, and there would be a Telek phase in all of them. It’s as much a part of humanity as hunger and fear and sex.”

  “And when the Teleks are out of the way—what’s the next phase? Is history only a series of bloody phases? Where’s the leveling-off point?”

  She smiled wanly. “Perhaps when we’re all Teleks.”

  Shorn gave her a strange look—calculation, curiosity, wonder. He returned to his tea as if to practical reality. “I suppose Geskamp has been trying to get hold of me all morning.” He considered a moment, then rose to his feet. “I’ll call the job and find out what’s happened.”

  A moment later he returned. “Geskamp’s nowhere around. A message just came in for me at the hotel, and it’s to be delivered by hand only.”

  “Perhaps Geskamp went of his own accord.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “More likely—” she paused. “Anyway, the hotel is a good place to stay away from.”

  Shorn clenched and unclenched his hands. “It frightens me.”

  “What?” She seemed surprised.

  “My own—vindictiveness. It’s not right to hate anyone. A person is bad because exterior forces have hurt his essentially good brain. I realize this—and yet I hate.”

  “The Teleks?”

  “No, not the Teleks.” He spoke slowly. “I fear them, good healthy fear. I kill them for survival. Those I want to kill, for pleasure, are the men who serve the Teleks for money, who sell their own kind.” He clenched, unclenched his hands. “It’s unhealthy to think like that.”

  “You’re too much the idealist, Will.”

  Shorn mused, talking in a monotone. “Our war is the war of ants against giants. They have the power—but they loom, we see them for miles. We’re among the swarm. We move a hundred feet, into a new group of people, we’re lost. Anonymity, that’s our advantage. So we’re safe—until a Judas-ant identifies us, drags us forth from the swarm. Then we’re lost; the giant foot comes down, there’s no escape. We—”

  The young woman raised her hand. “Listen.”

  A voice from the sound-line running under the ceiling molding said, “The murder of a Telek, Forence Nollinrude, Liaison Lieutenant, by subversive conspiracy has been announced. The murderer, Ian Geskamp, superintendent of construction at the Swanscomb Valley Stadium, has disappeared. It is expected that he will implicate a number of confederates when captured.”

  Shorn sat quietly.

  “What will they do if they catch him? Will they turn him over to the authorities?”

  Shorn nodded. “They’ve announced the murder. If they want to maintain the fiction of their subservience to federal law, then they’ve got to submit to the regular courts. Once he’s out of their direct custody, then no doubt he’ll die—any one of a number of unpleasant deaths. And then there will be further Acts of God. Another meteor into Geskamp’s home town, something of the sort…”

  “Why are you smiling?”

  “It ju
st occurred to me that Geskamp’s home town was Cobent Village, that used to be in Swanscomb Valley. They’ve already wiped that one off the map. But they’ll do something significant enough to point up the moral—that killing Teleks is a very expensive process.”

  “It’s odd that they bother with legality at all.”

  “It means that they want no sudden showdown. Whatever revolution there is to be, they want it to come gradually, with as little dislocation as possible, no sudden flood of annoying administrative detail.” He sat tapping his fingers nervously. “Geskamp was a good fellow. I’m wondering about this message at the hotel.”

  “If he were captured, drugged, your name and address would come out. You would be a valuable captive.”

  “Not while I can bite down on my back tooth. Full of cyanide. But I’m curious about that message. If it’s from Geskamp he needs help, and we should help him. He knows about the mitrox under the stadium. The subject might not arise during the course of questioning, especially under drugs, but we don’t want to run the risk.”

  “Suppose it’s a trick?”

  “Well—we might learn something.”

  “I could get it,” she said doubtfully.

  Shorn frowned.

  “No,” she said, “I don’t mean by walking in and asking for it; that would be foolish. You write a note authorizing delivery of the message to bearer.”

  The young woman said to the boy, “It’s very important that you follow instructions exactly.”

  “Yes, miss.”

  The boy rode the slipway to the Marmion Tower, whose seventh and eighth floors were given over to the Cort Hotel. He rode the lift to the seventh floor, went quietly to the desk.

  “Mr. Shorn sent me to pick up his mail.” He passed the note across the desk.

  The clerk hesitated, looked away in preoccupation, then without words handed the boy an envelope.

  The boy returned to the ground floor, walked out on the street, where he paused, waited. Apparently no one followed him. He rode the slipway north, along the gray streets to the Tarrogat, stepped around the corner, jumped on the high-speed East Division slipway. Heavy commercial traffic growled through the street beside him, trucks and drays, a few surface cars. The boy spied a momentary gap, stepped to the outside band, jumped running into the street. He darted across, climbed on the slipway moving in the opposite direction, watching over his shoulder. No one followed. He rode a mile, past the Flatiron Y, turned into Grant Avenue, jumped to the stationary, crouched by the corner.