The Narrow Land

by Jack Vance

  A sound, from somewhere not too far ahead. Ern dodged off the path, flattened himself behind a hummock.

  No one appeared. Ern moved forward through the cycads and, presently, through the black fronds, he saw the village of the men: a marvel of ingenuity and complication! Nearby stood tall bins containing food-stuffs, then, at a little distance, a row of thatched stalls stacked with poles, coils of rope, pots of pigment and grease. Yellow tinkle-birds, perched on the gables, made a constant chuckling clamor. The bins and stalls faced an open space surrounding a large platform, where a ceremony of obvious import was in progress. On the platform stood four men, draped in bands of woven leaves and four women wearing dark red shawls and tall hats decorated with tinkle-bird scales. Beside the platform, in a miserable gray clot, huddled the single-crested children, the individuals distinguishable only by an occasional gleam of eye or twitch of pointed crest.

  One by one the children were lifted up to the four men, who gave each a careful examination. Most of the male children were dismissed and sent down into the crowd. The rejects, about one in every ten, were killed by the blow of a stone mallet and propped up to face the wall of storm. The girl-children were sent to the other end of the platform, where the four women waited. Each of the trembling girl-children was considered in turn. About half were discharged from the platform into the custody of a woman and taken to a booth; about one in every five was daubed along the skull with white paint and sent to a nearby pen where the double-crested children were also confined. The rest suffered a blow of the mallet. The corpses were propped to face the wall of murk...

  Above Ern's head sounded the mindless howl of a tinkle-bird. Ern darted back into the brush. The bird drifted overhead on clashing scales. Men ran to either side, chased Ern back and forth, and finally captured him. He was dragged to the village, thrust triumphantly up on the platform, amid calls of surprise and excitement. The four priests, or whatever their function, surrounded Ern to make their examination. There was a new set of startled outcries. The priests stood back in perplexity, then after a mumble of discussion signaled to the priest-women. The mallet was brought forward-but was never raised. A man from the crowd jumped up on the platform, to argue with the priests. They made a second careful study of Ern's head, muttering to each other. Then one brought a knife, another clamped Ern's head. The knife was drawn the length of his cranium, first to the left of the central ridge, then to the right, to produce a pair of near-parallel cuts. Orange blood trickled down Ern's face; pain made him tense and stiff. A woman brought forward a handful of some vile substance which she rubbed into the wounds. Then all stood away, murmuring and speculating. Ern glared back, half-mad with fear and pain.

  He was led to a booth, thrust within. Bars were dropped across the aperture and laced with thongs.

  Ern watched the remainder of the ceremony. The corpses were dismembered, boiled and eaten. The white-daubed girl-children were marshaled into a group with all those double-crested children with whom Ern had previously identified himself. Why, he wondered, had he not been included in this group? Why had he first been threatened with the mallet, then wounded with a knife? The situation was incomprehensible.

  The girls and the two-crested children were marched away through the brush. The other girls with no more ado became members of the community. The male children underwent a much more formal instruction. Each man took one of the boys under his sponsorship, and subjected him to a rigorous discipline. There were lessons in deportment, knot-tying, weaponry, language, dancing, the various outcries.

  Ern received minimal attention. He was fed irregularly, as occasion seemed to warrant The period of his confinement could not be defined, the changeless gray sky providing no chronometric reference; and indeed, the concept of time as a succession of definite interims was foreign to Ern's mind. He escaped apathy only by attending the instruction in adjoining booths, where single-crested boys were taught language and deportment Ern learned the language long before those under instruction; he and his double-crested fellows had used the rudiments of this language in the long-gone halcyon past.

  The twin wounds along Ern's skull eventually healed, leaving parallel weals of scar-tissue. The black feathery combs of maturity were likewise sprouting, covering his entire scalp with down.

  None of his erstwhile comrades paid him any heed. They had become indoctrinated in the habits of the village; the old life of the shallows had receded in their memories. Watching them stride past his prison, Ern found them increasingly apart from himself. They were lithe, slender, agile, like tall keen-featured lizards. He was heavier, with blunter features, a broader head; his skin was tougher and thicker, a darker gray. He was now almost as large as the men, though by no means so sinewy and quick: when need arose, they moved with mercurial rapidity.

  Once or twice Ern, in a fury, attempted to break the bars of his booth, only to be prodded with a pole for his trouble, and he therefore desisted from this unprofitable exercise. He became fretful and bored. The booths to either side were now used only for copulation, an activity which Ern observed with dispassionate interest

  The booth at last was opened. Ern rushed forth, hoping to surprise his captors and win free, but one man seized him, another looped a rope around his body. Without ceremony he was led from the village.

  The men offered no hint of their intentions. Jogging along at a half-trot, they took Ern through the black brush in that direction known as "sea-left:" which was to say, with the sea on the left hand. The trail veered inland, rising over bare hummocks, dropping into dank swales, brimming with rank black dendrons.

  Ahead loomed a great copse of umbrella trees, impressively tall, each stalk as thick as the body of a man, each billowing leaf large enough to envelope a half-dozen booths like that in which Ern had been imprisoned.

  Someone had been at work. A number of the trees had been cut, the poles trimmed and neatly stacked, the leaves cut into rectangular sheets and draped over ropes. The racks supporting the poles had been built with meticulous accuracy, and Ern wondered who had done such precise work: certainly not the men of the village, whose construction even Ern found haphazard.

  A path led away through the forest: a path straight as a string, of constant width, delineated by parallel lines of white stones: a technical achievement far beyond the capacity of the men, thought Ern.

  The men now became furtive and uneasy. Ern tried to hang back, certain that whatever the men had in mind was not to his advantage, but willy-nilly he was jerked forward.

  The path made an abrupt turn, marched up a swale between copses of black-brown cycads, turned out upon a field of soft white moss, at the center of which stood a large and splendid village. The men, pausing in the shadows, made contemptuous sounds, performed insulting acts-provoked, so Ern suspected, by envy, for the village across the meadow surpassed that of his captors as much as that village excelled the environment of the shallows. There were eight precisely spaced rows of huts, built of sawed planks, decorated or given symbolic import by elaborate designs of blue, maroon and black. At the sea-right and sea-left ends of the central avenue stood larger constructions with high-peaked roofs, shingled, like all the others, with slabs of biotite. Notably absent were disorder and refuse; this village, unlike the village of the single-crested men, was fastidiously neat. Behind the village rose the great bluff Ern had noticed on his exploration of the coast.

  At the edge of the meadow stood a row of six stakes, and to the first of these the men tied Ern.

  "This is the village of the 'Twos'," declared one of the men. "Folk such as yourself. Do not mention that we cut your scalp or affairs will go badly."

  They moved back, taking cover under a bank of worm plants. Ern strained at his bonds, convinced that no matter what the eventuality, it could not be to his benefit

  The villagers had taken note of Ern. Ten persons set forth across the meadow. In front came four splendid 'Twos," stepping carefully, with an exaggerated strutting gait, followed by six young One-gi
rls, astoundingly urbane in gowns of wadded umbrella leaf. The girls had been disciplined; they no longer used their ordinary sinuous motion but walked in a studied simulation of the Two attitudes. Ern stared in fascination. The "Twos" appeared to be of his own sort, sturdier and heavier than the cleaver-headed "Ones."

  The pair in the van apparently shared equal authority. They comported themselves with canonical dignity, and their garments-fringed shawls of black, brown and purple, boots of gray membrane with metal clips, metal filigree greaves- were formalized and elaborate. He on the stormward side wore a crest of glittering metal barbs; he on the darkward side a double row of tall black plumes. The Twos at their back seemed of somewhat lesser prestige. They wore caps of complicated folds and tucks and carried halberds three times their own length. At the rear walked the One-girls, carrying parcels. Ern saw them to be members of his own class, part of the group which had been led away after the selection ritual. Their skin had been stained dark red and yellow; they wore dull yellow caps, yellow shawls, yellow sandals, and walked with the mincing delicate rigidity in which they had been schooled.

  The foremost Twos, halting at either side of Ern, examined him with portentous gravity. The halberdiers fixed him with a minatory stare. The girls posed in self-conscious attitudes. The Twos squinted in puzzlement at the double ridges of scar tissue along his scalp. They arrived at a dubious consensus: "He appears sound, if somewhat gross of body and oddly ridged."

  One of the halberdiers, propping his weapon against a stake, unbound Ern, who stood tentatively half of a mind to take to his heels. The Two wearing the crest of metal barbs inquired,

  "Do you speak?"

  "Yes."

  "You must say "Yes, Preceptor of the Storm Dazzle'; such is the form."

  Ern found the admonition puzzling, but no more so than the other attributes of the Twos. His best interests, so he decided lay in cautious cooperation. The Twos, while arbitrary and capricious, apparently did not intend him harm. The girls arranged the parcels beside the stake: payment, so it seemed, to the One-men.

  "Come then," commanded he of the black plumes. "Watch your feet, walk correctly! Do not swing your arms; you are a Two, an important individual; you must act appropriately, according to the Way."

  "Yes, Preceptor of the Storm Dazzle."

  "You will address me as 'Preceptor of the Dark Chill'!"

  Confused and apprehensive, Ern was marched across the meadow of pale moss. The trail, demarcated now by lines of black stones, bestrewn with black gravel, and glistening in the damp, exactly bisected the meadow, which was lined to either side by tall black-brown fan-trees. First walked the preceptors, then Ern, then the halberdiers and finally the six One-girls.

  The trail connected with the central avenue of the village, which opened at the center into a square plaza paved with squares of wood. To the darkward side of the plaza stood a tall black tower supporting a set of peculiar black objects; on the stormward side an identical white tower presented lightning symbols. Across and set back in a widening of the avenue was a long two-story hall, to which Ern was conducted and lodged in a cubicle.

  A third pair of Twos, of rank higher than the halberdiers but lower than the Preceptors-the 'Pedagogue of the Storm Dazzle' and the 'Pedagogue of the Dark Chill'-took Ern in charge. He was washed, anointed with oil, and again the weals along his scalp received a puzzled inspection. Ern began to suspect that the Ones had used duplicity; that, in order to sell him to the Twos, they had simulated double ridges across his scalp; and that, after all, he was merely a peculiar variety of One. It was indeed a fact that his sexual parts resembled those of the One-men rather than the epicene, or perhaps atrophied, organs of the Twos. The suspicion made him more uneasy than ever, and he was relieved when the pedagogues brought him a cap, half of silver scales, half of glossy black bird-fiber, which covered his scalp, and a shawl hanging across his chest and belted at the waist, which concealed his sex organs.

  As with every other aspect and activity of the Two-village there were niceties of usage in regard to the cap. "The Way requires that in low-ceremonial activity, you must stand with black toward Night and silver toward Chaos. If a ritual or other urgency impedes, reverse your cap."

  This was the simplest and least complicated of the decorums to be observed.

  The Pedagogues found much to criticize in Ern's deportment.

  "You are somewhat more crude and gross than the usual cadet," remarked the Pedagogue of Storm Dazzle. "The injury to your head has affected your condition."

  "You will be carefully schooled," the Pedagogue of Dark Chill told him. "As of this moment, consider yourself a mental void."

  A dozen other young Twos, including four from Ern's class, were undergoing tutelage. As instruction was on an individual basis, Ern saw little of them. He studied diligently and assimilated knowledge with a facility which won him grudging compliments. When he seemed proficient in primary methods, he was introduced to cosmology and religion. "We inhabit the Narrow Land," declared the Pedagogue of Storm Dazzle. "It extends forever! How can we assert this with such confidence? Because we know that the opposing principles of Storm and Dark Chill, being divine, are infinite. Therefore, the Narrow Land, the region of confrontation, likewise is infinite."

  Ern ventured a question. "What exists behind the wall of storm?"

  "There is no 'behind.' STORM-CHAOS is, and dazzles the dark with his lightnings. This is the masculine principle. DARK-CHILL, the female principle, is. She accepts the rage and fire and quells it. We Twos partake of each, we are at equilibrium, and hence excellent."

  Ern broached a perplexing topic: "The Two-women do not produce eggs?"

  "There are neither Two-women nor Two-men! We are brought into being by dual-divine intervention, when a pair of eggs in a One-woman's clutch are put down in juxtaposition. Through alternation, these are always male and female and so yield a double individual, neutral and dispassionate, symbolized by the paired cranial ridges. One-men and One-women are incomplete, forever driven by the urge to couple; only fusion yields the true Two."

  It was evident to Ern that questioning disturbed the Pedagogues, so he desisted from further interrogation, not wishing to call attention to his unusual attributes. During instruction he had sensibly increased in size. The combs of maturity were growing up over his scalp; his sexual organs had developed noticeably. Both, luckily, were concealed, by cap and shawl. In some fashion he was different from other Twos, and the Pedagogues, should they discover this fact, would feel dismay and confusion, at the very least

  Other matters troubled Ern: namely the impulses aroused within himself by the slave One-girls. Such tendencies were defined to be ignoble! This was no way for a Two to act! The Pedagogues would be horrified to learn of his leanings. But if he were not a Two-what was he?

  Ern tried to quell his hot blood by extreme diligence. He began to study the Two technology, which like every other aspect of Two society was rationalized in terms of formal dogma. He learned the methods of collecting bog iron, of smelting, casting, forging, hardening and tempering. Occasionally he wondered how the skills had first been evolved, inasmuch as empiricism, as a mode of thought, was antithetical to the Dual Way.

  Ern thoughtlessly touched upon the subject during a recitation. Both Pedagogues were present. The Pedagogue of Storm-Dazzle replied, somewhat tartly, that all knowledge was a dispensation of the two Basic Principles.

  "In any event," stated the Pedagogue of Dark-Chill, "the matter is irrelevant What is, is, and by this token is optimum."

  "Indeed," remarked the Pedagogue of Storm-Dazzle, "the very fact that you have formed this inquiry betrays a disorganized mind, more typical of a 'Freak' than a Two."

  "What is a 'Freak'?" asked Ern.

  The Pedagogue of Dark-Chill made a stern gesture. "Once again your mentality tends to random association and discontent with authority!"

  "Respectfully, Pedagogue of Dark-Chill, I wish only to learn the nature of 'wrong,' so that I may know its dist
inction from right'"

  "It suffices that you imbue yourself with 'right,' with no reference whatever to 'wrong'!"

  With this viewpoint Ern was forced to be content The Pedagogues, leaving the chamber, glanced back at him. Ern heard a fragment of their muttered conversation. "-surprising perversity-" "-but for the evidence of the cranial ridges-"

  In perturbation Ern walked back and forth across his cubicle. He was different from the other cadets: so much was clear. At the refectory, where the cadets were brought nutriment by One-girls, Ern covertly scrutinized his fellows. While only little less massive than himself, they seemed differently proportioned, almost cylindrical, with features and protrusions less prominent If he were different, what kind of person was he? A "Freak'? What was a 'Freak'? A masculine Two? Ern was inclined to credit this theory, for it explained his interest in the One-girls, and he turned to watch them gliding back and forth with trays. In spite of their One-ness, they were undeniably appealing...

  Thoughtfully Ern returned to his cubicle. In due course a One-girl came past Ern summoned her into the cubicle and made his wishes known. She showed surprise and uneasiness, though no great disinclination. "You are supposed to be neutral; what will everyone think?"

  "Nothing whatever, if they are unaware of the situation."

  "True. But is the matter feasible? I am One and you are a Two-"

  "The matter may or may not be feasible; how will the

  truth be known unless it is attempted, orthodoxy notwithstanding?"

  "Well, then, as you will..."

  A monitor looked into the cubicle, to stare dumbfounded. "What goes on here?" He looked more closely, then tumbled backward into the compound to shout: "A Freak, a Freak Here among us, a Freak! To arms, kill the Freak!"

  Ern thrust the girl outside. "Mingle with the others, deny everything. I now feel that I must leave." He ran out upon the central avenue, looked up and down. The halberdiers, informed of emergency, were arraying themselves in formally appropriate gear. Ern took advantage of the delay to run from the village. In pursuit came the Twos, calling threats and ritual abuse. The sea-right path toward the pole forest and the swamp was closed to him; Ern fled sea-left, toward the great bluff. Dodging among fan trees and banks of wormweed, finally hiding under a bank of fungus, he gained a respite while the halberdiers raced past