The World-Thinker and Other Stories

by Jack Vance

  “Perhaps. Already I begin to look at life and existence from another viewpoint.”

  Laurie looked worried. “I thought things were just the same.”

  “Fundamentally, yes. But this feeling of power—of not being tied down—” Shorn laughed. “Don’t look at each other like that. I’m not dangerous. I’m only a Telek by courtesy. And now, where can we get three pressure suits?”

  “At this time of night? I don’t know.”

  “No matter. I’m a Telek. We’ll get them. Provided of course you’d like to visit the Moon. All-expense tour, courtesy of Adlari Dominion. Laurie, would you like to fly up, fast as light, fast as thought, stand in the Earthshine, on the lip of Eratosthenes, looking out over the Mare Imbrium—”

  She laughed uneasily. “I’d love it, Will. But—I’m scared.”

  “What about you, Gorman?”

  “No. You two go. There’ll be other chances for me.”

  Laurie jumped to her feet. Her cheeks were pink, her mouth was red and half open in excitement. Shorn looked at her with a sudden new vision. “Very well, Gorman. Tomorrow you can start your experiments. Tonight—”

  Laurie found herself picked up, carried out through the window.

  “Tonight,” said Shorn by her side, “we’ll pretend that we’re souls—happy souls—exploring the universe.”

  Circumbright lived in a near-abandoned suburb to the north of Tran. His house was a roomy old antique, rearing like a balky horse over the Meyne River. Big industrial plants blocked the sky in all directions; the air reeked with foundry fumes, sulfur, chlorine, tar, burnt-earth smells.

  Within, the house was cheerful and untidy. Circumbright’s wife was a tall strange woman who worked ten hours a day in her studio, sculpturing dogs and horses. Shorn had met her only once; so far as he knew she had no interest or even awareness of Circumbright’s anti-Telek activities.

  He found Circumbright basking in the sun, watching the brown river water roll past. He sat on a little porch he had built apparently for no other purpose but this.

  Shorn dropped a small cloth sack in his lap. “Souvenirs.”

  Circumbright opened the bag unhurriedly, pulled out a handful of stones, each tagged with a card label. He looked at the first, hefted it. “Agate.” He read the label. “Mars. Well, well.” A bit of black rock was next. “Gabbro? From—let’s see. Ganymede. My word, you wandered far afield.” He shot a bland blue glance up at Shorn. “Telekinesis seems to have agreed with you. You’ve lost that haggard hunted expression. Perhaps I’ll have to become a Telek myself.”

  “You don’t look haggard and hunted. Quite the reverse.”

  Circumbright returned to the rocks. “Pumice. From the Moon, I suppose.” He read the label. “No—Venus. You made quite a trip.”

  Shorn looked up into the sky. “Rather hard to describe. There’s naturally a feeling of loneliness. Darkness. Something like a dream. Out on Ganymede we were standing on a ridge, obsidian, sharp as a razor. Jupiter filled a third of the sky, the red spot right in the middle, looking at us. There was a pink and blue dimness. Peculiar. Black rock, the big bright planet. It was—weird. I thought, suppose the power fails me now, suppose we can’t get home? It gave me quite a chill.”

  “You seem to have made it.”

  “Yes, we made it.” Shorn seated himself, thrust out his legs. “I’m not hunted and haggard, but I’m confused. Two days ago I thought I had a good grasp on my convictions—”

  “And now?”

  “Now—I don’t know.”

  “About what?”

  “About—our efforts. Their ultimate effect, assuming we’re successful.”

  “Hm-m-m.” Circumbright rubbed his chin. “Do you still want to submit to experiments?”

  “Of course. I want to know why and how telekinesis works.”

  “When will you be ready?”

  “Whenever you wish.”

  “Now?”

  “Why not? Let’s get started.”

  “As soon as you’re ready, we’ll try encephalograms as a starting point.”

  Circumbright was tired. His face, normally pink and cherubic, sagged; filling his pipe, his fingers trembled.

  Shorn leaned back in the leather chaise longue, regarded Circumbright with mild curiosity. “Why are you so upset?”

  Circumbright gave the litter of paper on the workbench a contemptuous flick of the fingers. “It’s the cursed inadequacy of the technique, the instruments. Trying to paint miniatures with a whisk broom, fix a watch with a pipe wrench. There—” he pointed “—encephalograms. Every lobe of your brain. Photographs—by X-ray, by planar section, by metabolism triggering. We’ve measured your energy flow so closely that if you tossed me a paper clip I’d find it on paper somewhere.”

  “And there’s what?”

  “Nothing suggestive. Wavy lines on the encephalograms. Increased oxygen absorption. Pineal tumescence. All gross by-products of whatever is happening.”

  Shorn yawned and stretched. “About as we expected.”

  Circumbright nodded heavily. “As we expected. Although I hoped for—something. Some indication where the energy came from—whether through the brain, from the object itself, or from—nowhere.”

  Shorn caused water to leap from a glass, form a wet glistening hoop in the air. He set it around Circumbright’s neck, started it contracting slowly.

  “Hey,” cried Circumbright reproachfully. “This is serious business.”

  Shorn snaked the water back in the glass.

  Circumbright leaned forward. “Where do you feel the energy comes from?”

  Shorn reflected. “It seems to be in matter itself—just as motion seems to be part of your hand.”

  Circumbright sighed in dissatisfaction. He continued half-querulously. “And at what speed does telekinesis work? If it’s light-speed, then the action presumably occurs in our own space-time. If it’s faster, then it’s some other medium, and the whole thing’s unknowable.”

  Shorn rose to his feet. “We can check the last with comparative facility.”

  Circumbright shook his head. “We’d need instruments of a precision I don’t have on hand.”

  “No. Just a stop watch and—let’s see. A flare, a timer, a couple of spacesuits.”

  “What’s your idea?” Circumbright asked suspiciously.

  “I’m taking you space-walking.”

  Circumbright rose uncertainly. “I’m afraid I’ll be frightened.”

  “If you’re an agoraphobe—don’t try it.”

  Circumbright blew out his cheeks. “I’m not that.”

  “You wait here,” said Shorn. “I’ll be back in ten minutes with the spacesuits.”

  Half an hour later, they stumped out on Circumbright’s little sun porch. Circumbright’s outfit had been intended for a larger man; his head projected only half up into the head-bubble, to Shorn’s amusement. “Ready?”

  Circumbright, his blue eyes wide and solemn, nodded.

  “Up we go.”

  Earth dwindled below, as if snatched out from under their feet. Speed without acceleration. To all sides was blackness, the black of vacancy, continuing emptiness. The moon rolled over their shoulders, a pretty pocked ball, black and silver.

  The sun dwindled, became a disk of glare which seemed to cast no light, no heat. “We’re seeing it by its high frequencies,” Shorn observed. “A kind of reverse Doppler effect—”

  “Suppose we run into an asteroid or meteorite?”

  “Don’t worry, we won’t.”

  “How do you know? You couldn’t stop in time.”

  Shorn ruminated. “No. It’s something to think about. I’m not sure whether or not we have momentum. Another experiment for you to worry about. But after today I’ll send some kind of shield out ahead of us, just in case.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Out to one of Jupiter’s satellites. Look, there goes Mars.” He dropped the telescopic lens in front of his eyes. “There’s Io. We’ll lan
d on Io.”

  They stood on a dim gray table, a few feet above a tortured jumble of black scoriae. Frozen white stuff, like rock salt, lay in the crevices. The horizon was near, very sharp. Jupiter filled a quadrant of the sky to the left.

  Shorn arranged the flare and the timer on a flat area. “I’ll set it for ten minutes. Now—on the count of five I’ll start the timer and you start your stopwatch.”

  “Ready.”

  “One—two—three—four—five.” He looked at Circumbright, Circumbright nodded. “Good. Now we take ourselves out into space where we can watch.”

  Io dwindled to a tarnished metal disk, a bright spot.

  “We’re far enough, I think. Now we watch for the flare, and check the time by your stop watch. The increment over ten minutes will give us the light-distance from Io to where we’re—” Shorn considered. “What are we doing? Standing? Floating?”

  “Waiting.”

  “Waiting. After knowing the light distance, we can make our tests.”

  “Are we sure that we’re not moving now? If we’re moving, our observations will be inaccurate.”

  Shorn shook his head. “We’re not moving. It’s the way telekinesis works. I stop us dead, in relation to Io, the same way a man on roller skates stops by grabbing a post. He just—stops himself.”

  “You know more about it than I do.”

  “It’s more intuition than knowledge—which is suggestive in itself. How’s the time?”

  “Nine minutes. Ten—twenty seconds. Thirty seconds. Forty. Fifty—one—two—three—”

  They looked toward Io through the telescopic visors. Circumbright counted on in the same cadence. “Four—five—six—seven—eight—nine—ten minutes. One—two—three—”

  A brief flicker appeared from the dull disk. Circumbright clamped down on the stem of his stop watch. “Three point six seconds. Allow two tenths of a second reaction time. That gives three point four seconds. Over six hundred thousand miles. Now what?”

  “Let me have your stop watch. I’ll set it to zero. Now.” Shorn squared himself towards Io. “Now we’ll try telekinesis on a whole world.”

  Circumbright blinked. “Suppose there’s not enough energy available?”

  “We’ll soon know.” He looked at Io, pressed the stop watch starter.

  One second—two seconds—three seconds—Io jerked ahead in its orbit.

  Shorn looked at the stop watch. “Three point seven. A tenth of a second, which might be an error. Apparently telekinesis works almost instantaneously.”

  Circumbright looked glumly out toward incandescent Sirius. “We’ll play merry hell trying to get any significant results with my lab equipment. Somebody’s got to invent some new tools—”

  Shorn followed his gaze out toward Sirius. “I wonder what the limit of action is.”

  Circumbright asked doubtfully, “You’re not going to try this—knack of yours on Sirius?”

  “No. We’d have to wait eight years for the light to reach us. But—” He contemplated the massive form of Jupiter. “There’s a challenging subject right there.”

  Circumbright said uneasily, “Suppose the effort drains the source of telekinetic energy—like a short circuit drains a battery? We might be left out here helpless—”

  Shorn shook his head. “It wouldn’t work that way. My mind is the critical factor. Size doesn’t mean much, so long as I can grasp it, take hold of all of it.”

  He stared at Jupiter. Seconds passed. “About now, if it’s going to happen.”

  Jupiter quivered, floated up across twenty degrees of sky, dropped back into its former orbit.

  Circumbright looked almost fearfully at Shorn. Shorn laughed shakily. “Don’t worry, Gorman. I’m not out of my mind. But think of the future! All these wasted worlds moved in close, bathing in sunlight. Wonderful new planets for men to live on—”

  They turned their faces toward the sun. Earth was a mist-white ball, growing larger. “Think,” said Circumbright, “think of what a mad Telek could do. He could come out here as we did, pick up the moon, toss it into North America or Europe as easily as dropping a rock into the mud. Or he could look at Earth, and it would start to move toward the sun—through the corona, and Earth would be singed, seared clean; he could drop it into a sunspot.”

  Shorn kept his eyes turned away from Earth. “Don’t put any ideas into my mind.”

  “It’s a real problem,” insisted Circumbright.

  “I imagine that eventually there will be an alarm system of some kind; and as soon as it sounds, every mind will grab onto conditions as they are and hold tight. Or maybe a corps of guardians—”

  VII

  Back on Earth, in Laurie’s apartment on upper Martinvelt, Shorn and Circumbright sat drinking coffee.

  Circumbright was unaccustomedly nervous and consulted his watch at five-minute intervals.

  Shorn watched quizzically. “Who are you expecting?”

  Circumbright glanced quickly, guiltily, around the room. “I suppose there’s no spy-beetle anywhere close.”

  “Not according to the detector cell.”

  “I’m waiting for the messenger. A man called Luby, from East Shore.”

  “I don’t think I know him.”

  “You’d remember him if you did.”

  Laurie said, “I think I hear him now.”

  She went to the door, slid it back. Luby came into the room, quiet as a cat. He was a man of forty who looked no more than seventeen. His skin was clear gold, his features chiseled and handsome, his hair a close cap of tight bronze curls. Shorn thought of the Renaissance Italians—Cesare Borgia, Lorenzo Medici.

  Circumbright made introductions which Luby acknowledged with a nod of the head and a lambent look; then he took Circumbright aside, muttered in a rapid flow of syllables.

  Circumbright raised his eyebrows, asked a question; Luby shook his head, responded impatiently. Circumbright nodded, and without another word Luby left the room, as quietly as he had entered.

  “There’s a high-level meeting—policy-makers—out at Portinari Gate. We’re wanted.” He rose to his feet, stood indecisively a moment. “I suppose we had better be going.”

  Shorn went to the door, looked out into the corridor. “Luby moves quietly. Isn’t it unusual to concentrate top minds in a single meeting?”

  “Unprecedented. I suppose it’s something important.”

  Shorn thought a moment. “Perhaps it would be better to say nothing of my new—achievements.”

  “Very well.”

  They flew north through the night, into the foothills, and Lake Paienza spread like a dark blot below, rimmed by the lights of Portinari.

  Portinari Gate was a rambling inn six hundred years old, high on a hillside, overlooking lake and town. They dropped to the soft turf in the shadow of great pines, walked to the back entrance.

  Circumbright knocked, and they felt a quiet scrutiny.

  The door opened, an iron-faced woman with a halo of iron-gray hair stood facing them. “What do you want?”

  Circumbright muttered a password; silently she stepped back. Shorn felt her wary scrutiny as he and Laurie entered the room.

  A brown-skinned man with black eyes and gold rings in his ears flipped up a hand. “Hello, Circumbright.”

  “Hello…Thursby, this is Will Shorn, Laurita Chelmsford.”

  Shorn inspected the brown man with interest. The Great Thursby, rumored co-ordinator of the world-wide anti-Telek underground.

  There were others in the room, sitting quietly, watchfully. Circumbright nodded to one or two, then took Shorn and Laurie to the side.

  “I’m surprised,” he said. “The brains of the entire movement are here.” He shook his head. “Rather ticklish.”

  Shorn felt of the detector. “No spy-cells.”

  More people entered, until possibly fifty men and women occupied the room. Among the last group was the young-old Luby.

  A stocky dark-skinned man rose to his feet. “This meeting is a dep
arture from our previous methods, and I hope it won’t be necessary again for a long time.”

  Circumbright whispered to Shorn, “That’s Kasselbarg, European Post.”

  Kasselbarg swung a slow glance around the room. “We’re starting a new phase of the campaign. Our first was organizational; we built a world-wide underground, a communication system, set up a ladder of command. Now—the second stage: preparation for our eventual action…which, of course, will constitute the third stage.

  “We all know the difficulties under which we work; since we can’t hold up a clear and present danger, our government is not sympathetic to us, and in many cases actively hostile—especially in the persons of suborned police officials. Furthermore we’re under the compulsion of striking an absolutely decisive blow on our first sally. There won’t be a second chance for us. The Teleks must be—” he paused “—they must be killed. It’s a course toward which we all feel an instinctive revulsion, but any other course bares us to the incalculable power of the Teleks. Now, any questions, any comments?”

  Shorn, compelled by a sudden pressure he only dimly understood, rose to his feet. “I don’t want to turn the movement into a debating society—but there’s another course where killing is unnecessary. It erases the need of the decisive blow, it gives us a greater chance of success.”

  “Naturally,” said Kasselbarg mildly, “I’d like to hear your plan.”

  “No operation, plan it as carefully as you will, can guarantee the death of every Telek. And those who aren’t killed may go crazy in anger and fear; I can picture a hundred million deaths, five hundred million, a billion deaths in the first few seconds after the operation starts—but does not quite succeed.”

  Kasselbarg nodded. “The need for a hundred per cent coup is emphatic. The formulation of such a plan will constitute Phase Two, of which I just now spoke. We certainly can’t proceed on any basis other than a ninety-nine percent probability of fulfillment.”

  The iron-faced woman spoke. “There are four thousand Teleks, more or less. Here on Earth ten thousand people die every day. Killing the Teleks seems a small price to pay for security against absolute tyranny. It’s either act now, while we have limited freedom of choice, or dedicate the human race to slavery for as long into the future as we can imagine.”