The Narrow Land

by Jack Vance

  "We've got to rush them," shouted Landry. "If they get outside they can knock us over as we leave. Let's go!"

  He sprang forward and Root was close behind. Landry used the gun as a club and Root used his fists and the Dicantrops rattled like cornstalks against the walls. Landry erupted through the hole. Root pushed Barbara through and, kicking back at the natives behind him, struggled out into the air.

  Landry's momentum had carried him away from the pyramid, out into a seething mob of Dicantrops. Root, following more slowly, pressed his back to the granite. He sensed the convulsive movement in the wide darkness. "The whole colony must be down here," he shouted into Barbara's ear. For a minute he was occupied with the swarming natives, keeping Barbara behind him as much as possible. The first ledge of granite was about shoulder height

  "Step on my hands," he panted. "I'll shove you up."

  "But-Landry!" came Barbara's choked wail.

  "Look at that crowd!" bit Root furiously. "We can't do anything." A sudden rush of small bony forms almost overwhelmed him. "Hurry up!"

  Whimpering she stepped into his clasped hands. He thrust her up on the first ledge. Shaking off the clawing natives who had leapt on him, he jumped, scrambled up beside her. "Now run!" he shouted in her ear and she fled down the ledge.

  From the darkness came a violent cry. "Root! Root! For God's sake-they've got me down-" Another hoarse yell, rising to a scream of agony. Then silence.

  "Hurry!" said Root. They came to the far corner of the pyramid. "Jump down," panted Root. "Down to the ground."

  "Landry!" moaned Barbara, teetering at the edge.

  "Get down snarled Root. He thrust her down to the white sand and, seizing her hand, ran across the desert, back toward the station. A minute or so later, with pursuit left behind, he slowed to a trot.

  "We should go back," cried Barbara. "Are you going to leave him to those devils?"

  Root was silent a moment. Then, choosing his words, he said, "I told him to stay away from the place. Anything that happens to him is his own fault. And whatever it is, it's already happened. There's nothing we can do now."

  A dark hulk shouldered against the sky-Landry's ship.

  "Let's get in here," said Root. "We'll be safer than in the station."

  He helped her into the ship, clamped tight the port "Phew, He shook his head. "Never thought it would come to this."

  He climbed into the pilot's seat, looked out across the desert. Barbara huddled somewhere behind him, sobbing softly.

  An hour passed, during which they said no word. Then, without warning, a fiery orange ball rose from the hill across the pond, drifted toward the station. Root blinked, jerked upright in his seat. He scrambled for the ship's machine-gun, yanked at the trigger-without result

  When at last he found and threw off the safety the orange ball hung over the station and Root held his fire. The ball brushed against the antenna-a tremendous explosion spattered to every corner of vision. It seared Root's eyes, threw him to the deck, rocked the ship, left him dazed and half-conscious.

  Barbara lay moaning. Root hauled himself to his feet. A seared pit, a tangle of metal, showed where the station had stood. Root dazedly slumped into the seat, started the fuel pump, plunged home the catalyzers. The boat quivered, bumped a few feet along the ground. The tubes sputtered, wheezed.

  Root looked at the fuel gauge, looked again. The needle pointed to zero, a fact which Root had known but forgotten. He cursed his own stupidity. Their presence in the ship might have gone ignored if he had not called attention to it

  Up from the hill floated another orange ball. Root jumped for the machine gun, sent out a burst of explosive pellets. Again the roar and the blast and the whole top of the hill was blown off, revealing what appeared to be a smooth strata of black rock.

  Root looked over his shoulder to Barbara. "This is it"

  "Wha-what do you mean?"

  "We can't get away. Sooner or later-" His voice trailed off. He reached up, twisted a dial labelled EMERGENCY. The ship's ULR unit hummed. Root said into the mesh, "Di-cantropus station-we're being attacked by natives. Send help at once."

  Root sank back into the seat. A tape would repeat his message endlessly until cut off.

  Barbara staggered to the seat beside Root "What were those orange balls?"

  "That's what I've been wondering-some sort of bomb."

  But there were no more of them. And presently the horizon began to glare, the hill became a silhouette on the electric sky. And over their heads the transmitter pulsed an endless message into space.

  "How long before we get help?" whispered Barbara.

  "Too long," said Root, staring off toward the hill. "They must be afraid of the machine gun-I can't understand what else they're waiting for. Maybe good light."

  "They can-" Her voice stopped. She stared. Root stared, held by unbelief-amazement. The hill across the pond was breaking open, crumbling,..

  Root sat drinking brandy with the captain of the supply ship Method, which had come to then* assistance, and the captain was shaking his head.

  'I've seen lots of strange things around this cluster but this masquerade beats everything."

  Root said, "It's strange in one way, in another it's as cold and straightforward as ABC. They played it as well as they could and it was pretty darned good. If it hadn't been for that scoundrel Landry they'd have fooled us forever."

  The captain banged his glass on the desk, stared at Root "But why?"

  Root said slowly, "They liked Dicantropus. It's a hell-hole, a desert to us, but it was heaven to them. They liked the heat, the dryness. But they didn't want a lot of off-world creatures prying into their business-as we surely would have if we'd seen through the masquerade. It must have been an awful shock when the first Earth ship set down here."

  "And that pyramid ..."

  "Now that's a strange thing. They were good psychologists, these Dicantrops, as good as you could expect an off-world race to be. If you'll read a report of the first landing, you'll find no mention of the pyramid. Why? Because it wasn't here. Landry thought it looked new. He was right. It was new. It was a fraud, a decoy-just strange enough to distract our attention.

  "As long as that pyramid sat out there, with me focusing all my mental energy on it, they were safe-and how they must have laughed.. As soon as Landry broke in and discovered the fraud, then it was all over...

  "That might have been their miscalculation," mused Root "Assume that they knew nothing of crime, of anti-social action. If everybody did what he was told to do their privacy was safe forever." Root laughed. "Maybe they didn't know human beings so well after all."

  The captain refilled the glasses and they drank in silence, "Wonder where they came from," he said at last.

  Root shrugged. "I suppose we'll never know. Some other hot dry planet, that's sure. Maybe they were refugees or some peculiar religious sect or maybe they were a colony."

  "Hard to say," agreed the captain sagely. "Different race, different psychology. That's what we run into all the time."

  "Thank God they weren't vindictive," said Root, half to himself. "No doubt they could have killed us any one of a dozen ways after I'd sent out that emergency call and they had to leave."

  "It all ties in," admitted the captain. Root sipped the brandy, nodded. "Once that ULR signal went out, their isolation was done for. No matter whether we were dead or not, there'd be Earthmen swarming around the station, pushing into their tunnels-and right there went their secret."

  And he and the captain silently inspected the hole across the pond where the tremendous space-ship had lain buried under the spine-scrub and rusty black creeper.

  "And once that space-ship was laid bare," Root continued, "there'd be a hullabaloo from here to Fomalhaut A tremendous mass like that? We'd have to know everything-their space-drive, their history, everything about them. If what they wanted was privacy that would be a thing of the past. If they were a colony from another star they had to protect their secrets t
he same way we protect ours."

  Barbara was standing by the ruins of the station, poking at the tangle with a stick. She turned and Root saw that she held his pipe. It was charred and battered but still recognizable.

  She slowly handed it to him.

  "Well?" said Root

  She answered in a quiet withdrawn voice: "Now that I'm leaving I think I'll miss Dicantropus." She turned to him, "Jim..."

  "What?"

  "I'd stay on another year if you'd like."

  "No," said Root. "I don't like it here myself."

  She said, still in the low tone: "Then-you don't forgive me for being foolish ..."

  Root raised his eyebrows. "Certainly I do. I never blamed you in the first place. You're human. Indisputably human."

  "Then-why are you acting-like Moses?"

  Root shrugged.

  "Whether you believe me or not," she said with an averted gaze, "I never-"

  He interrupted with a gesture. "What does it matter? Suppose you did-you had plenty of reason to. I wouldn't hold it against you."

  "You would-in your heart"

  Root said nothing.

  "I wanted to hurt you. I was slowly going crazy-and yon didn't seem to care one way or another. Told-him I wasn't-your property."

  Root smiled his sad smile. I'm human too."

  He made a casual gesture toward the hole where the Di-cantrop spaceship had lain. "If you still want diamonds go down that hole with a bucket. There're diamonds big as grapefruit. It's an old volcanic neck, it's the grand-daddy of all diamond mines. I've got a claim staked out around it; we'll be using diamonds for billiard balls as soon as we get some machinery out here."

  They turned slowly back to the Method.

  "Three's quite a crowd on Dicantropus," said Root thoughtfully. "On Earth, where there're three billion, we can have a little privacy."

  Where Hesperut Falls

  My servants will not allow me to kill myself. I have sought self-extinction by every method, from throat-cutting to the intricate routines of Yoga, but so far they have thwarted my most ingenious efforts.

  I grow ever more annoyed. What is more personal, more truly one's own, than a man's own life? It is his basic possession, to retain or relinquish as he sees fit. If they continue to frustrate me, someone other than myself will suffer. I guarantee this.

  My name is Henry Revere. My appearance is not remarkable, my intelligence is hardly noteworthy, and my emotions run evenly. I live in a house of synthetic shell, decorated with wood and jade, and surrounded by a pleasant garden. The view to one side is the ocean, to the other, a valley sprinkled with houses similar to my own. I am by no means a prisoner, although my servants supervise me with the most minute care. Their first concern is to prevent my suicide, just as mine is to achieve it.

  It is a game in which they have all the advantages-a detailed knowledge of my psychology, corridors behind the walls from which they can observe me, and a host of technical devices. They are men of my own race, in fact of my own blood. But they are immeasurably more subtle than I.

  My latest attempt was clever enough-although I had tried it before without success. I bit deeply into my tongue and thought to infect the cut with a pinch of garden loam. The servants either noticed me placing the soil in my mouth or observed the tension of my jaw.

  They acted without warning. I stood on the terrace, hoping the soreness in my mouth might go undetected. Then, without conscious hiatus, I found myself reclining on a pallet, the dirt removed, the wound healed. They had used a thought-damping ray to anaesthetize me, and their sure medical techniques, aided by my almost invulnerable constitution, defeated the scheme.

  As usual, I concealed my annoyance and went to my study. This is a room I have designed to my own taste, as far as possible from the complex curvilinear style which expresses the spirit of the age.

  Almost immediately the person in charge of the household entered the room. I call him Dr. Jones because I cannot pronounce his name. He is taller than I, slender and fine-boned. His features are small, beautifully shaped, except for his chin which to my mind is too sharp and long, although I understand that such a chin is a contemporary criterion of beauty. His eyes are very large, slightly protuberant; his skin is clean of hair, by reason both of the racial tendency toward hairlessness, and the depilation which every baby undergoes upon birth.

  Dr. Jones' clothes are vastly fanciful. He wears a body mantle of green film and a dozen vari-colored disks which spin slowly around his body like an axis. The symbolism of these disks, with their various colors, patterns, and directions of spin, are discussed in a chapter of my History of Man-so I will not be discursive here. The disks serve also as gravity deflectors, and are used commonly in personal flight

  Dr. Jones made me a polite salute, and seated himself upon an invisible cushion of anti-gravity. He spoke in the contemporary speech, which I could understand well enough, but whose nasal trills, gutturals, sibilants and indescribable friccatives, I could never articulate.

  "Well, Henry Revere, how goes it?" he asked.

  In my pidgin-speech I made a noncommittal reply.

  "I understand," said Dr. Jones, "that once again you undertook to deprive us of your company."

  I nodded. "As usual I failed," I said.

  Dr. Jones smiled slightly. The race had evolved away from laughter, which, as I understand, originated in the cave-man's bellow of relief at the successful clubbing of an adversary.

  "You are self-centered," Dr. Jones told me. "You consider only your own pleasure."

  "My life is my own. If I want to end it, you do great wrong in stopping me."

  Dr. Jones shook his head. "But you are not your own property. You are the ward of the race. How much better if you accepted this fact!"

  "I can't agree," I told him.

  "It is necessary that you so adjust yourself." He studied me ruminatively. "You are something over ninety-six thousand years old. In my tenure at this house you have attempted suicide no less than a hundred times. No method has been either too crude or too painstaking."

  He paused to watch me but I said nothing. He spoke no more than the truth, and for this reason I was allowed no object sharp enough to cut, long enough to strangle, noxious enough to poison, heavy enough to crush-even if I could have escaped surveillance long enough to use any deadly weapon.

  I was ninety-six thousand, two hundred and thirty-two years old, and life long ago had lost that freshness and anticipation which makes it enjoyable. I found existence not so much unpleasant, as a bore. Events repeated themselves with a deadening familiarity. It was like watching a rather dull drama for the thousandth time: the boredom becomes almost tangible and nothing seems more desirable than oblivion.

  Ninety-six thousand, two hundred and two years ago, as a student of bio-chemistry, I had offered myself as a guinea pig for certain tests involving glands and connective tissue. An incalculable error had distorted the experiment, with my immortality as the perverse result. To this day I appear not an hour older than my age at the time of the experiment, when I was so terribly young.

  Needless to say, I suffered tragedy as my parents, my friends, my wife, and finally my children grew old and died, while I remained a young man. So it has been. I have seen untold generations come and go; faces flit before me like snowflakes as I sit here. Nations have risen and fallen, empires extended, collapsed, forgotten. Heroes have lived and died; seas drained, deserts irrigated, glaciers melted, mountains leveled. Almost a hundred thousand years I have persisted, for the most part effacing myself, studying humanity. My great work has been the History of Man.

  Although I have lived unchanging, across the years the race evolved. Men and women grew taller, and more slender. Every century saw features more refined, brains larger, more flexible. As a result, I, Henry Revere, homo sapiens of the twentieth century, today am a freakish survival, somewhat more advanced than the Neanderthal, but essentially a precursor to the true Man of today.

  I am a living foss
il, a curio among curios, a public ward, a creature denied the option oc-life or death. This was what Dr. Jones had come to explain to me, as if I were a retarded child. He was kindly, but unusually emphatic. Presently he departed and I was left to myself, in whatever privacy the scrutiny of half a dozen pairs of eyes allows.

  It is harder to kill one's self than one might imagine. I have considered the matter carefully, examining every object within my control for lethal potentialities. But my servants are preternaturally careful. Nothing in this house could so much as bruise me. And when I leave the house, as I am privileged to do, gravity deflectors allow me no profit from high places, and in this exquisitely organized civilization there are no dangerous vehicles or heavy machinery in which I could mangle myself.

  In the final analysis I am flung upon my own resources. I have an idea. Tonight I shall take a firm grasp on my head and try to break my neck...

  Dr. Jones came as always, and inspected me with his usual reproach. "Henry Revere, you trouble us all with your discontent. Why can't you reconcile yourself to life as you have always known it?"

  "Because I am bored! I have experienced everything. There is no more possibility of novelty or surprise! I feel so sure of events that I could predict the future!"

  He was rather more serious than usual. "You are our guest. You must realize that our only concern is to ensure your safety."

  "But I don't want safety! Quite the reverse!" Dr. Jones ignored me. "You must make up your mind to cooperate. Otherwise-" he paused significantly "-we will be forced into a course of action that will detract from the dignity of us all."

  "Nothing could detract any further from my dignity," I replied bitterly. "I am hardly better than an animal in a zoo."

  "That is neither your fault nor ours. We all must fulfill our existences to the optimum. Today your function is to serve as vinculum with the past."

  He departed. I was left to my thoughts. The threats had been veiled but were all too clear. I was to desist from further attempts upon my life or suffer additional restraint.

  I went out on the terrace, and stood looking across the ocean, where the sun was setting into a bed of golden clouds. I was beset by a dejection so vast that I felt stifled. Completely weary of a world to which I had become alien, I was yet denied freedom to take my leave. Everywhere I looked were avenues to death: the deep ocean, the heights of the palisade, the glitter of energy in the city. Death was a privilege, a bounty, a prize, and it was denied to me.