She stumbled to her feet. Her raiment was moist with perspiration. She needed a shower and fresh clothes.…
Back at Manhome, the Commercial Credit Circuit called shrilly for human attention. A junior subchief of the Instrumentality walked over to the machine and held out his hand.
The machine dropped a card neatly into his fingers.
He looked at the card.
“Debit Viola Siderea – credit Earth Contingency – subcredit Norstrilian account – four hundred million man megayears.”
Though all alone, he whistled to himself in the empty room. “We’ll all be dead, stroon or no stroon, before they finish paying that!” He went off to tell his friends the odd news.
The machine, not getting its card back, made another one.
JACK VANCE
The Moon Moth
I was talking to an academician a few years back, a fellow teaching an SF course on the college level, and found, to my astonishment, that he’d never heard of Jack Vance. This dismayed me, because Vance has not only produced some of the best work of the past forty years, he is an evolutionary figure of immense importance both to fantasy and science fiction.
Born in San Francisco in 1920, Vance served throughout World War II in the US Merchant Navy. Most of the individual stories that would later be melded into his first novel, The Dying Earth, were written while Vance was at sea – he was unable to sell them, a problem he would also have with the book itself, the market for fantasy being almost non-existent at the time. The Dying Earth was eventually published in an obscure edition in 1950 by a small semi-professional press, went out of print almost immediately, and remained out of print for more than a decade thereafter. Nevertheless, it became an underground cult classic, and its effect on future generations of writers is incalculable: for one example, out of many, The Dying Earth is one of the most recognizable influences on Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun (Wolfe has said, for instance, that The Book of Gold which is mentioned by Severian is supposed to be The Dying Earth). Vance returned to this milieu in 1965, with a series of stories that would be melded into The Eyes of the Overworld, and, in the early ’80s, returned yet again with Cugel’s Saga and Rhialto the Marvelous – taken together, The Dying Earth stories represent one of the most impressive achievements in science-fantasy.
In science fiction itself, Vance would do some of his best early work for magazines such as Thrilling Wonder Stories and Startling Stories and the short-lived Worlds Beyond in the mid-’50s – “The Five Gold Bands,” “Abercrombie Station,” The Houses of Iszm, “The Kokod Warriors,” “The New Prime” and the magazine version of “Big Planet,” among others. (Vance also was appearing in Astounding from time to time, but most of his work for Astounding would be rather bland by Vance’s standards, only one story there, the later novella “The Miracle Workers,” being full-throated Vancian Future Baroque – a somewhat atypical style for Astounding, and I can’t help but wonder if Campbell took the story mostly because it deals fairly centrally with psionics, a pet Campbellian topic of the time.)
By the late ’50s and early ’60s, Vance was doing some of his best work, and some of the best work of the period, most of it by this time for Galaxy and F&SF – the marvelous “The Dragon Masters,” “The Men Return,” the underrated The Languages of Pao (one of only a handful of books even today to deal with semantics as a science; Delany’s Babel-17 and Ian Watson’s The Embedding are two later examples), the wonderful The Star King and The Killing Machine (two of the best hybrids of SF and the mystery/espionage novel ever written), “Green Magic,” The Blue World, “The Last Castle”.
And the story that follows, “The Moon Moth,” a marvelous evocation of a complex and richly detailed alien milieu as well as a slyly satiric examination of how manners and morals and values change with fluid ease from society to society (a typical Vance motif), full of vivid color and moments of haunting strangeness, all laced with Vance’s typical dour irony and deadpan humor.
Vance is reminiscent of R. A. Lafferty in that both men break all the supposed rules of writing, and get away with it. Both eschew naturalism, each using a mannered and highly idio-syncratic prose style (baroque and stiffly elegant in Vance’s case, energetically informal and folksy in Laffety’s), and both have their characters spout theatrical, deliberately non-naturalistic, hieratic dialogue of a sort that never actually came out of anyone’s mouth – if you were to film their work, no mumbling Method actors would need to apply; only someone with the flamboyant grandiloquence of a John Barrymore would do. Vance also – and here comes an even stranger comparison – reminds me of Philip K. Dick: each author relies heavily on a personal formula of his own, using the same basic frameworks, plots, and types of characters and situations again and again (what is important in each is not creating new motifs, but refining and developing variations on their obsessive themes); each man’s style is limited in technical range, but, within that range, they are the best in the business at what they do well; both emphasize how manners and mores change from society to society; and, although neither is thought of as a humorist, the work of both is suffused with a dry, understated wit; Vance’s humor is somewhat drier than Dick’s, Dick’s more surreal than Vance’s, but both tend toward black humor, sly satire, a bitterly sardonic view of life and human nature, and to grotesque and macabrely ironic set-pieces. Both men have trouble ending novels, both frequently just letting the story peter away, as though they had gradually lost interest in what they were writing. And, with each, their impact on the field rests more on the aggregate effect of their work than on any particular story or novel – or, to adapt a remark of Thomas Disch’s concerning Dick which is equally valid for Vance, their novels are more impressive collectively than each by each.
And, much as SF authors writing today about phenomenology or the nature of reality write inevitably in the shadow of Philip K. Dick, so writers describing distant worlds and alien societies with strange alien customs write in the shadow of Vance. No one in the history of the field has brought more intelligence, imagination, or inexhaustible fertility of invention to that theme than Vance; even ostensible potboilers such as his Planet of Adventure series are full of vivid and richly portrayed alien societies, and bizarre and often profoundly disturbing insights into the ways in which human psychology might be altered by immersion in alien values and cultural systems. No one is better than Vance is at delivering that quintessential “sense of wonder” that is at the heart of science fiction, and reading him has left me a legacy of evocative images that will stay with me forever.
Vance has won two Hugo Awards, a Nebula Award, two World Fantasy Awards (one the prestigious Life Achievement Award), and the Edgar Award for best mystery novel. His other books include Emphyrio (one of the best novels of the late ’60s, up until the disappointing ending), The Anome, The Palace of Love, The Face, The Book of Dreams, City of the Chasch, The Dirdir, The Pnume, The Brave Free Men, Lyonesse, The Green Pearl, Trullion: Alastor 2262, Wyst: Alastor 1716, and Araminta Station, among many others. His short fiction has been collected in Eight Fantasms and Magics, The Best of Jack Vance, Green Magic, Lost Moons, The Complete Magnus Ridolph, The World Between and Other Stories, The Dark Side of the Moon and The Narrow Land.
The houseboat had been built to the most exacting standards of Sirenese craftmanship, which is to say, as close to the absolute as human eye could detect. The planking of waxy dark wood showed no joints, the fastenings were platinum rivets countersunk and polished flat. In style, the boat was massive, broad beamed, steady as the shore itself, without ponderosity or slackness of line. The bow bulged like a swan’s breast, the stem rising high, then crooking forward to support an iron lantern. The doors were carved from slabs of a mottled black-green wood; the windows were many sectioned, paned with squares of mica, stained rose, blue, pale green and violet. The bow was given to service facilities and quarters for the slaves; amidships were a pair of sleeping cabins, a dining saloon and a parlor saloon, opening upon an observation
deck at the stern.
Such was Edwer Thissell’s houseboat, but ownership brought him neither pleasure nor pride. The houseboat had become shabby. The carpeting had lost its pile; the carved screens were chipped; the iron lantern at the bow sagged with rust. Seventy years ago the first owner, on accepting the boat, had honored the builder and had been likewise honored; the transaction (for the process represented a great deal more than simple giving and taking) had augmented the prestige of both. That time was far gone; the houseboat now commanded no prestige whatever. Edwer Thissell, resident on Sirene only three months, recognized the lack but could do nothing about it: this particular houseboat was the best he could get.
He sat on the rear deck practicing the ganga, a zitherlike instrument not much larger than his hand. A hundred yards inshore, surf defined a strip of white beach; beyond rose jungle, with the silhouette of craggy black hills against the sky. Mireille shone hazy and white overhead, as if through a tangle of spider web; the face of the ocean pooled and puddled with mother-of-pearl luster. The scene had become as familiar, though not as boring, as the ganga, at which he had worked two hours, twanging out the Sirenese scales, forming chords, traversing simple progressions. Now he put down the ganga for the zachinko, this a small sound-box studded with keys, played with the right hand. Pressure on the keys forced air through reeds in the keys themselves, producing a concertinalike tone. Thissel ran off a dozen quick scales, making very few mistakes. Of the six instruments he had set himself to learn, the zachinko had proved the least refractory (with the exception, of course, of the hymerkin, that clacking, slapping, clattering device of wood and stone used exclusively with the slaves).
Thissell practiced another ten minutes, then put aside the zachinko. He flexed his arms, wrung his aching fingers. Every waking moment since his arrival had been given to the instruments: the hymerkin, the ganga, the zachinko, the kiv, the strapan, the gomapard. He had practiced scales in nineteen keys and four modes, chords without number, intervals never imagined on the Home Planets. Trills, arpeggios, slurs, click-stops and nasalization; damping and augmentation of overtones; vibratos and wolf-tones; concavities and convexities. He practiced with a dogged, deadly diligence, in which his original concept of music as a source of pleasure had long become lost. Looking over the instruments Thissell resisted an urge to fling all six into the Titanic.
He rose to his feet, went forward through the parlor saloon, the dining saloon, along a corridor past the galley and came out on the foredeck. He bent over the rail, peered down into the underwater pens where Toby and Rex, the slaves, were harnessing the dray-fish for the weekly trip to Fan, eight miles north. The youngest fish, either playful or captious, ducked and plunged. Its streaming black muzzle broke water, and Thissell, looking into its face, felt a peculiar qualm: the fish wore no mask!
Thissell laughed uneasily, fingering his own mask, the Moon Moth. No question about it, he was becoming acclimated to Sirene! A significant stage had been reached when the naked face of a fish caused him shock!
The fish were finally harnessed; Toby and Rex climbed aboard, red bodies glistening, black cloth masks clinging to their faces. Ignoring Thissell they stowed the pen, hoisted anchor. The dray-fish strained, the harness tautened, the houseboat moved north.
Returning to the afterdeck, Thissell took up the strapan – this a circular sound-box eight inches in diameter. Forty-six wires radiated from a central hub to the circumference where they connected to either a bell or a tinkle-bar. When plucked, the bells rang, the bars chimed; when strummed, the instrument gave off a twanging, jingling sound. When played with competence, the pleasantly acid dissonances produced an expressive effect; in an unskilled hand, the results were less felicitous, and might even approach random noise. The strapan was Thissell’s weakest instrument and he practiced with concentration during the entire trip north.
In due course the houseboat approached the floating city. The dray-fish were curbed, the houseboat warped to a mooring. Along the dock a line of idlers weighed and gauged every aspect of the houseboat, the slaves and Thissell himself, according to Sirenese habit. Thissell, not yet accustomed to such penetrating inspection, found the scrutiny unsettling, all the more so for the immobility of the masks. Self-consciously adjusting his own Moon Moth, he climbed the ladder to the dock.
A slave rose from where he had been squatting, touched knuckles to the black cloth at his forehead, and sang on a three-tone phrase of interrogation: “The Moon Moth before me possibly expresses the identity of Ser Edwer Thissell?”
Thissell tapped the hymerkin which hung at his belt and sang: “I am Ser Thissell.”
“I have been honored by a trust,” sang the slave. “Three days from dawn to dusk I have waited on the dock; three nights from dusk to dawn I have crouched on a raft below this same dock listening to the feet of the Night-men. At last I behold the mask of Ser Thissell.”
Thissell evoked an impatient clatter from the hymerkin. “What is the nature of this trust?”
“I carry a message, Ser Thissell. It is intended for you.”
Thissell held out his left hand, playing the hymerkin with his right. “Give me the message.”
“Instantly, Ser Thissell.”
The message bore a heavy superscription:
EMERGENCY COMMUNICATION! RUSH!
Thissell ripped open the envelope. The message was signed by Castel Cromartin, Chief Executive of the Inter-world Policies Board, and after the formal salutation read:
ABSOLUTELY URGENT the following orders be executed! Aboard Carina Cruzeiro, destination Fan, date of arrival January 10 UT, is notorious assassin, Haxo Angmark. Meet landing with adequate authority, effect detention and incarceration of this man. These instructions must be successfully implemented. Failure is unacceptable.
ATTENTION! Haxo Angmark is superlatively dangerous. Kill him without hesitation at any show of resistance.
Thissell considered the message with dismay. In coming to Fan as Consular Representative he had expected nothing like this; he felt neither inclination nor competence in the matter of dealing with dangerous assassins. Thoughtfully he rubbed the fuzzy gray cheek of his mask. The situation was not completely dark; Esteban Rolver, Director of the Spaceport, would doubtless cooperate, and perhaps furnish a platoon of slaves.
More hopefully, Thissell reread the message. January 10, Universal Time. He consulted a conversion calendar. Today, 40th in the Season of Bitter Nectar – Thissell ran his finger down the column, stopped. January 10. Today.
A distant rumble caught his attention. Dropping from the mist came a dull shape: the lighter returning from contact with the Carina Cruzeiro.
Thissell once more reread the note, raised his head, studied the descending lighter. Aboard would be Haxo Angmark. In five minutes he would emerge upon the soil of Sirene. Landing formalities would detain him possibly twenty minutes. The landing field lay a mile and a half distant, joined to Fan by a winding path through the hills.
Thissell turned to the slave. “When did this message arrive?”
The slave leaned forward uncomprehendingly. Thissell reiterated his question, singing to the clack of the hymerkin: “This message: you have enjoyed the honor of its custody how long?”
The slave sang: “Long days have I waited on the wharf, retreating only to the raft at the onset of dusk. Now my vigil is rewarded; I behold Ser Thissell.”
Thissell turned away, walked furiously up the dock. Ineffective, inefficient Sirenese! Why had they not delivered the message to his houseboat? Twenty-five minutes – twenty-two now …
At the esplanade Thissell stopped, looked right, then left, hoping for a miracle: some sort of air-transport to wisk him to the spaceport, where, with Rolver’s aid, Haxo Angmark might still be detained. Or better yet, a second message canceling the first. Something, anything.… But air-cars were not to be found on Sirene, and no second message appeared.
Across the esplanade rose a meager row of permanent structures, built of stone and iron and so
proof against the efforts of the Night-men. A hostler occupied one of these structures, and as Thissell watched a man in a splendid pearl and silver mask emerged riding one of the lizardlike mounts of Sirene.
Thissell sprang forward. There was still time; with luck he might yet intercept Haxo Angmark. He hurried across the esplanade.
Before the line of stalls stood the hostler, inspecting his stock with solicitude, occasionally burnishing a scale or whisking away an insect. There were five of the beasts in prime condition, each as tall as a man’s shoulder, with massive legs, thick bodies, heavy wedge-shaped heads. From their fore-fangs, which had been artificially lengthened and curved into near circles, gold rings depended; the scales of each had been stained in diaper-pattern; purple and green, orange and black, red and blue, brown and pink, yellow and silver.
Thissell came to a breathless halt in front of the hostler. He reached for his kiv*, then hesitated. Could this be considered a casual personal encounter? The zachinko perhaps? But the statement of his needs hardly seemed to demand the formal approach. Better the kiv after all. He struck a chord, but by error found himself stroking the ganga. Beneath his mask Thissell grinned apologetically; his relationship with this hostler was by no means on an intimate basis. He hoped that the hostler was of sanguine disposition, and in any event the urgency of the occasion allowed no time to select an exactly appropriate instrument. He struck a second chord, and, playing as well as agitation, breathlessness and lack of skill allowed, sang out a request: “Ser Hostler, I have immediate need of a swift mount. Allow me to select from your herd.”
The hostler wore a mask of considerable complexity which Thissell could not identify: a construction of varnished brown cloth, pleated gray leather and, high on the forehead, two large green and scarlet globes, minutely segmented like insect-eyes. He inspected Thissell a long moment, then, rather ostentatiously selecting his stimic*, executed a brilliant progression of trills and rounds, of an import Thissell failed to grasp. The hostler sang, “Ser Moon Moth, I fear that my steeds are unsuitable to a person of your distinction.”
Modern Classics of Science Fiction Page 14
