by Jack Vance
TRULLION: Alastor 2262
Jack Vance
Out toward the rim of the galaxy hangs Alastor Cluster, a whorl of thirty thousand live stars in an irregular volume twenty to thirty light-years in diameter. The surrounding region is dark and, except for a few hermit stars, unoccupied. To the exterior view, Alastor presents a flamboyant display of star-streams, luminous webs, sparkling nodes. Dust clouds hang across the brightness; the engulfed stars glow russet, rose, or smoky amber. Dark stars wander unseen among a million subplanetary oddments of iron, slag and ice: the so-called “starments.”
Scattered about the cluster are three thousand inhabited planets with a human population of approximately five trillion persons. The worlds are diverse, the populations equally so; nevertheless they share a common language and all submit to the authority of the Connatic at Lusz, on the world Numenes.
The current Connatic is Oman Ursht, sixteenth in the Idite succession, a man of ordinary and undistinguished appearance. In portraits and on public occasions he wears a severe black uniform with a black casque, in order to project an image of inflexible authority, and this is how he is known to the folk of Alastor Cluster. In private Oman Ursht is a calm and reasonable man, who tends to under- rather than over-administrate. He ponders all aspects of his conduct, knowing well that his slightest act—a gesture, a word, a symbolic nuance—might start off an avalanche of unpredictable consequences. Hence his effort to create the image of a man rigid, terse and unemotional.
To the casual observer, Alastor Cluster is a system placid and peaceful. The Connatic knows differently. He recognizes that wherever human beings strive for advantage, disequilibrium exists; lacking easement, the social fabric becomes taut and sometimes rips asunder. The Connatic conceives his function to be the identification and relief of social stresses.
Sometimes he ameliorates, sometimes he employs techniques of distraction. When harshness becomes unavoidable he deploys his military agency, the Whelm. Oman Ursht winces to see an insect injured; the Connatic without compunction orders a million persons to their doom. In many cases, believing that each condition generates its own counter-condition, he stands aloof, fearing to introduce a confusing third factor. When in doubt, do nothing: this is one of the Connatic’s favorite credos.
After an ancient tradition he roams anonymously about the cluster. Occasionally, in order to remedy an injustice, he represents himself as an important official; often he rewards kindness and self-sacrifice. He is fascinated by the ordinary life of his subjects and listens attentively to such dialogues as:
OLD MAN (to a lazy youth}: If everybody had what they wanted, who would work? Nobody.
YOUTH: Not I, depend on it.
OLD MAN: And you’d be the first to cry out in anguish, for it’s work what keeps the lights on. Get on with it now, put your shoulder into it. I can’t bear sloth.
YOUTH (grumbling): If I were Connatic I’d arrange that everyone had their wishes. No toil! Free seats at the hussade game! A fine space-yacht! New clothes every day! Servants to lay forth delectable foods!
OLD MAN: The Connatic would have to be a genius to satisfy both you and the servants. They’d live only to box your ears. Now get on with your work.
Or again:
YOUNG MAN: Never go near Lusz, I beseech you! The Connatic would take you for his own!
GIRL (mischievously): Then what would you do? YOUNG MAN: I’d rebel! I’d be the most magnificent starmenter1 ever to terrify the skies! At last I’d conquer the power of Alastor—Whelm, Connatic and all—and win you back for my very own.
GIRL: You’re gallant, but never never never would the Connatic choose ordinary little me; already the most beautiful women of Alastor attend him at Lusz.
YOUNG MAN: What a merry life he must lead! To be Connatic: this is my dream!
GIRL: (makes fretful sound and becomes cool.)
Lusz, the Connatic’s palace, is indeed a remarkable structure, rising ten thousand feet above the sea on five great pylons. Visitors roam the lower promenades; from every world of Alastor Cluster they come, and from places beyond-the Darkling Regions, the Primarchic, the Erdic Sector, the Rubrimar Cluster, and all the other parts of the galaxy which men have made their own.
Above the public promenades are governmental offices, ceremoniakhalls, a communications complex, and somewhat higher, the famous Ring of the Worlds, with an informational chamber for each inhabited planet of the cluster. The highest pinnacles contain the Connatic’s personal quarters. They penetrate the clouds and sometimes pierce through to the upper sky. When sunlight glistens on its iridescent surfaces, Lusz, the palace of the Connatic, is a wonderful sight and is often reckoned the most inspiring artifact of the human race.
Chapter 1
Chamber 2262 along the Ring of the Worlds pertains to Trullion, the lone planet of a small white star, one spark in a spray curling out toward the cluster’s edge. Trullion is a small world, for the most part water, with a single narrow continent, Merlank,2 at the equator. Great banks of cumulus drift in from the sea and break against the central mountains; hundreds of rivers return down broad valleys where fruit and cereals grow so plentifully as to command no value.
The original settlers upon Trullion brought with them those habits of thrift and zeal which had promoted survival in a previously harsh environment; the first era of Trill history produced a dozen wars, a thousand fortunes, a caste of hereditary aristocrats, and a waning of the initial dynamism. The Trill commonalty asked itself: Why toil, why carry weapons when a life of feasts, singing, revelry and ease is an equal option? In the space of three generations old Trullion became a memory. The ordinary Trill now worked as circumstances directed: to prepare for a feast, to indulge his taste for hussade, to earn a pulsor for his boat or a pot for his kitchen or a length of cloth for his paray, that easy shirtlike garment worn by man and woman alike.
Occasionally he tilled his lush acres, fished the ocean, netted the river, harvested wild fruit, and when the mood was on him, dug emeralds and opals from the mountain slopes, or gathered cauch3. He worked perhaps an hour each day, or occasionally as much as two or three; he spent considerably more time musing on the verandah of his ramshackle house. He distrusted most technical devices, finding them unsympathetic, confusing and-more important-expensive, though he gingerly used a telephone the better to order his social activities, and took the pulsor of his boat for granted.
As in most bucolic societies, the Trill knew his precise place in the hierarchy of classes. At the summit, almost a race apart, was the aristocracy; at the bottom were the nomad Trevanyi, a group equally distinct. The Trill disdained unfamiliar or exotic ideas. Ordinarily calm and gentle, he nonetheless, under sufficient provocation, demonstrated ferocious rages, and certain of his customs—particularly the macabre ritual at the prutanshyr—were almost barbaric.
The government of Trullion was rudimentary and a matter in which the average Trill took little interest. Merlank was divided into twenty prefectures, each administered by a few bureaus and a small group of officials, who constituted a caste superior to the ordinary Trill but considerably inferior to the aristocrats. Trade with the rest of the cluster was unimportant; on all Trill only four space-ports existed; Port Gaw in the west of Merlank, Port Kerubian on the north coast, Port Maheul on the south coast, and Vayamenda in the east.
A hundred miles east of Port Maheul was the market town Welgen, famous for its fine hussade stadium. Beyond Welgen lay the Fens, a district of remarkable beauty. Thousands of waterways divided this area into a myriad islands, some tracts of good dimension, some so small as to support only a fisherman’s cabin and a tree for the mooring of his boat.
Everywhere entrancing vistas merged one into another. Gray-green menas, s
ilver-russet pomanders, black jerdine stood in stately rows along the waterways, giving each island its distinctive silhouette. Out upon their dilapidated verandahs sat the country folk, with jugs of homemade wine at hand. Sometimes they played music, using concertinas, small round-bellied guitars, mouth-calliopes that produced cheerful warbles and glisssandes. The light of the Fens were pale and delicate, and shimmered with colors too transient and subtle for the eye to detect. In the morning a mist obscured the distances; the sunsets were subdued pageants of lime-green and lavender. Skiffs and runabouts slid along the water; occasionally an aristocrat’s yacht glided past, or the ferry that connected Welgen with the Fen villages.
In the dead center of the Fens, a few miles from the village of Saurkash, was Rabendary Island, where lived Jut Hulden, his wife Marucha, and their three sons. Rabendary Island comprised about a hundred acres, including a thirty-acre forest of mena, blackwood, candlenut, semprissima. To the south spread the wide expanse of Ambal Broad. Farwan Water bounded Rabendary on the west, Gilweg Water on the east, and along the north shore flowed the placid Saur River. At the western tip of the island the ramshackle old home of the Huldens stood between a pair of huge mimosa trees. Rosalia vine grew up the posts of the verandah and overhung the edge of the roof, producing a fragrant shade for the pleasure of those taking their ease in the old string chairs. To the south was a view of Ambal Broad and Ambal Isle, a property of three acres supporting a number of beautiful pomanders, russet-silver against a background of solemn menas, and three enormous fanzaneels, holding their great shaggy pompoms high in the air. Through the foliage gleamed the white façade of the manse where Lord Ambal long ago had maintained his mistresses. The property was now owned by Jut Hulden, but he had no inclination to dwell in the manor, his friends would think him absurd.
In his youth Jut Hulden had played hussade for the Saurkash Serpents. Marucha had been sheirl4 for the Welgen Warlocks; so they had met, and married, and brought into being three sons, Shira and the twins Glinnes and Glay, and a daughter, Sharue, who had been stolen by the merlings.5
Chapter 2
Glinnes Hulden entered the world crying and kicking; Glay followed an hour later, in watchful silence. From the first day of their lives the two differed—in appearance, in temperament, in all the circumstances of their lives. Glinnes, like Jut and Shira, was amiable, trusting, and easy-natured; he grew into a handsome lad with a clear complexion, dusty-blond hair, a wide, smiling mouth. Glinnes entirely enjoyed the pleasures of the Fens: feasts, amorous adventures, star-watching and sailing, hussade, nocturnal merling hunts, simple idleness.
Glay at first lacked sturdy good health; for his first six years he was fretful, captious and melancholy. Then he mended, and quickly overtaking Glinnes was thenceforth the taller of the two. His hair was black, his features taut and keen, his eyes intent. Glinnes accepted events and ideas without skepticism; Glay stood aloof and saturnine. Glinnes was instinctively skilllful at hussade; Glay refused to set foot on the field. Though Jut was a fair man, he found it hard to conceal his preference for Glinnes. Marucha, herself tall, dark-haired, and inclined to romantic meditation, fancied Glay, in whom she thought to detect poetic sensibilities. She tried to interest Glay in music, and explained how through music he could express his emotions and make them intelligible to others. Glay was cold to the idea and produced only a few lackadaisical discords on her guitar.
Glay was a mystery even to himself. Introspection availed nothing; he found himself as confusing as did the rest of his family. As a youth his austere appearance and rather haughty self-sufficiency earned him the soubriquet “Lord Glay”; perhaps coincidentally, Glay was the only member of the household who wanted to move into the manor house on Ambal Isle. Even Marucha had put the idea away as a foolish if amusing daydream.
Glay’s single confidant was Akadie the mentor, who lived in a remarkable house on Sarpassante Island, a few miles north of Rabendary. Akadie, a thin long-armed man with an ill-assorted set of features—a big nose, sparse curls of snuff-brown hair, glassy blue eyes, a mouth continually trembling at the verge of a smile—was, like Glay, something of a misfit. Unlike Glay, he had turned idiosyncrasy to advantage, and drew custom even from the aristocracy.
Akadie’s profession included the offices of epigrammatist, poet, calligrapher, sage, arbiter of elegance, professional guest (hiring Akadie to grace a party was an act of conspicuous consumption), marriage broker, legal consultant, repository of local tradition, and source of scandalous gossip. Akadie’s droll face, gentle voice, and subtle language rendered his gossip all the more mordant. Jut distrusted Akadie and had nothing to do with him, to the regret of Marucha, who had never relinquished her social ambitions, and who felt in her heart of hearts that she had married below herself. Hussade sheirls often married lords!
Akadie had traveled to other worlds. At night, during star-watchings6, he would mark the stars he had visited; then he would describe their splendor and the astounding habits of their peoples. Jut Hulden cared nothing for travel; his interest in the other worlds lay in the quality of their hussade teams and the location of the Cluster Champions.
When Glinnes was sixteen he saw a starmenter ship. It dropped from the sky above Ambal Broad and slid at reckless speed down toward Welgen. The radio provided a minute-by-minute report of the raid. The starmenters landed in the central square, and seething forth plundered the banks, the jewel factors, and the cauch warehouse, cauch being by far the most valuable commodity produced on Trullion. They also seized a number of important personages to be held for ransom. The raid was swift and well-executed; in ten minutes the starmenters had loaded their ship with loot and prisoners. Unluckily for them, a Whelm cruiser chanced to be putting into Port Maheul when the alarm was broadcast and merely altered course to arrive at Welgen instead. Glinnes ran out on the verandah to see the Whelm ship arrive—a beautiful stately craft enameled in beige, scarlet and black. The ship dropped like an eagle toward Welgen and passed beyond Glinnes’ range of vision. The voice from the radio cried out in excitement: “—They rise into the air, but here comes the Whelm ship! By the Nine Glories, the Whelm ship is here! The starmenters can’t go into whisk7; they’d burn up from the friction! They must fight!”
The announcer could no longer control his voice for excitement: “The Whelm ship strikes; the starmenter is disabled! Hurrah! it drops back into the square. No, no! Oh horror! What horror! It has fallen upon the market; a hundred persons are crushed! Attention! Bring in all ambulances, all medical men! Emergency at Welgen! I can hear the sad cries… The starmenter ship is broken; still it fights… a blue ray… Another… The Whelm ship answers. The starmenters are quiet. Their ship is broken.” The announcer fell quiet a moment, then once more was prompted to excitement. “Now what a sight! The folk are crying with rage; they swarm in at the starmenters; they drag them forth…” He began to babble, then stopped short and spoke in a more subdued voice. “The constables have intervened. They have pushed back the crowds and the starmenters are now in custody, and this to their own rue, as well they know, for they desperately struggle. How they writhe and kick! It’s the prutanshyr for them! They prefer the vengeance of the crowd!… What a dreadful deed they have done upon the hapless town Welgen…”
Jut and Shira worked in the far orchard grafting scions to the apple trees. Glinnes ran to tell them the news. “… and at last the starmenters were captured and taken away!”
“So much the worse for them,” Jut said gruffly, and continued with his work. For a Trill, he was a man unusually self-contained and taciturn, traits that had become intensified since the death of Sharue by the merlings.
Shira said, “They’ll be sweeping off the prutanshyr. Perhaps we’d better learn the news.”
Jut grunted. “One torturing is much like another. The fire burns, the wheels wrench, the rope strains. Some folk thrive on it. For my excitement I’ll watch hussade.”
Shira winked at Glinnes. “One game is much like another. The forwards spring,
the water splashes, the sheirl loses her clothes, and one pretty girl’s belly is much like another’s.”
“There speaks the voice of experience,” said Glinnes, and Shira, the most notorious philanderer of the district, guffawed.
Shira did in fact attend the executions with his mother Marucha, though Jut kept Glinnes and Glay at home.
Shira and Marucha returned by the late ferry. Marucha was tired and went to bed; Shira, however, joined Jut, Glinnes and Glay on the verandah and rendered an account of what he had seen. “Thirty-three they caught, and had them all in cages out in the square. All the preparations were put up before their very eyes. A hard lot of men, I must say—I couldn’t place their race. Some might have been Echalites and some might have been Satagones, and one tall white-skinned fellow was said to be a Blaweg. Unfortunates all, in retrospect. They were naked and painted for shame: heads green, one leg blue, the other red. All gelded, of course. Oh, the prutanshyr’s a wicked place! And to hear the music! Sweet as flowers, strange and hoarse! It strikes through you as if your own nerves were being plucked for tones… Ah well, at any rate, a great pot of boiling oil was prepared, and a traveling-crane stood by. The music began—eight Trevanyl and all their horns and fiddles. How can such stern folk make such sweet music? It chills the bones and churns the bowels, and puts the taste of blood in your mouth! Chief Constable Filidice was there, but First Agent Gerence was the executioner. One by one the starmenters were grappled by hooks, then lifted and dipped into the oil, then hung up on a great high frame; and I don’t know which was more awful, the howls or the beautiful sad music. The people fell down on their knees; some fell into fits and cried out for terror or joy I can’t tell you. I don’t know what to make of it… After about two hours all were dead.”
“Hmmf,” said Jut Hulden. “They won’t be back in a hurry. So much, at least, can be said.”
