The Narrow Land

by Jack Vance

  The golem turned, shuffled into the V of green ribbon shaking off clods of mold, jarring the ground with its ponderous tread.

  Fair watched the squat shape dwindle, recede, yet never reach the angle of the magic V. He returned to his panel truck, tuned the receiver to the golem's eye and surveyed the fantastic vistas of the green realm.

  Two elementals of the green realm met on a silver spun landscape. They were Jaadian and Misthemar, and they fell to discussing the earthen monster which had stalked forty miles through the region known as Cil; which then, turning in its tracks, had retraced its steps, gradually increasing its pace until at the end it moved in a shambling rush, leaving a trail of clods on the fragile moth-wing mosaics.

  "Events, events, events," Misthemar fretted, "they crowd the chute of time till the bounds bulge. Or then again, the course is as lean and spare as a stretched tendon ... But in regard to this incursion ..." He paused for a period of reflection, and silver clouds moved over his head and under his feet.

  Jaadian remarked, "You are aware that I conversed with Howard Fair; he is so obsessed to escape the squalor of his world that he acts with recklessness."

  "The man Gerald Mclntyre was his uncle," mused Misthemar. "Mclntyre besought, we yielded; as perhaps now we must yield to Howard Fair."

  Jaadian uneasily opened his hand; shook off a spray of emerald fire. "Events press, both in and out. I find myself unable to act in this regard."

  "I likewise do not care to be the agent of tragedy."

  A Meaning came fluttering up from below: "A disturbance among the spiral towers! A caterpillar of glass and metal has come clanking; it has thrust electric eyes into the Portinone and broke open the Egg of Innocence. Howard Fair is the fault."

  Jaadian and Misthemar consulted each other with wry disinclination, "Very well, both of us will go; such a duty needs two souls in support."

  They impinged upon Earth and found Howard Fair in a wall booth at a cocktail bar. He looked up at the two strangers and one of them asked, "May we join you?"

  Fair examined the two men. Both wore conservative suits rand carried cashmere topcoats over their arms. Fair noticed that the left thumb-nail of each man glistened green.

  Fair rose politely to his feet "Will you sit down?" The green sprites hung up their overcoats and slid into the booth. Fair looked from one to the other. He addressed Jaadian. "Aren't you he whom I interviewed several weeks ago?"

  Jaadian assented. "You have not accepted my advice."

  Fair shrugged. "You asked me to remain ignorant, to accept my stupidity and ineptitude."

  "And why should you not?" asked Jaadian gently. "You are a primitive in a primitive realm; nevertheless not one man in a thousand can match your achievements."

  Fair agreed, smiling faintly. "But knowledge creates a craving for further knowledge. Where is the harm in knowledge?"

  Mithemar, the more mercurial of the sprites, spoke angrily. "Where is the harm? Consider your earthen monster! It befouled forty miles of delicacy, the record of ten million years. Consider your caterpillar! It trampled our pillars of carved milk, our dreaming towers, damaged the nerve-skeins which extrude and waft us our Meanings."

  "I'm dreadfully sorry," said Fair. "I meant no destruction."

  The sprites nodded. "But your apology conveys no guarantee of restraint."

  Fair toyed with his glass. A waiter approached the table, addressed the two sprites. "Something for you two gentlemen?"

  Jaadian ordered a glass of charged water, as did Misthemar. Fair called for another highball.

  "What do you hope to gain from this activity?" inquired Misthemar. "Destructive forays teach you nothing!"

  Fair agreed. "I have learned little. But I have seen miraculous sights. I am more than ever anxious to learn."

  The green sprites glumly watched the bubbles rising in their glasses. Jaadian at last drew a deep sigh. "Perhaps we can obviate toil on your part and disturbance on ours. Explicitly, what gains or advantages do you hope to derive from green magic?"

  Fair, smiling, leaned back into the red imitation-leather cushions. "I want many things. Extended life-mobility in time-comprehensive memory-augmented perception, with vision across the whole spectrum. I want physical charm and magnetism, the semblance of youth, muscular endurance ... Then there are qualities more or less speculative, such as-"

  Jaadian interrupted. "These qualities and characteristics we will confer upon you. In return you will undertake never again to disturb the green realm. You will evade centuries of toil; we will be spared the nuisance of your presence, and the inevitable tragedy."

  'Tragedy?" inquired Fair in wonder. "Why tragedy?"

  Jaadian spoke in a deep reverberating voice. "You are a man of Earth. Your goals are not our goals. Green magic makes you aware of our goals."

  Fair thoughtfully sipped his highball. "I can't see that this is a disadvantage. I am willing to submit to the discipline of instruction. Surely a knowledge of green magic will not change me into a different entity?"

  "No. And this is the basic tragedy!"

  Misthemar spoke in exasperation. "We are forbidden to harm lesser creatures, and so you are fortunate; for to dissolve you into air would end all the annoyance."

  Fair laughed. "I apologize again for making such a nuisance of myself. But surely you understand how important this is to me?"

  Jaadian asked hopefully, "Then you agree to our offer?"

  Fair shook his head. "How could I live, forever young, capable of extended learning, but limited to knowledge which I already see bounds to? I would be bored, restless, miserable."

  "That well may be," said Jaadian. "But not so bored, restless and miserable as if you were learned in green magic."

  Fair drew himself erect. "I must learn green magic. It is an opportunity which only a person both torpid and stupid could refuse."

  Jaadian sighed. "In your place I would make the same response." The sprites rose to their feet. "Come then, we will teach you." "Don't say we didn't warn you," said Misthemar.

  Time passed. Sunset waned and twilight darkened. A man walked up the stairs, entered Howard Fair's apartment. He was tall, unobtrusively muscular. His face was sensitive, keen, humorous; his left thumb-nail glistened green.

  Time is a function of vital processes. The people of Earth had perceived the motion of their clocks. On this understanding, two hours had elapsed since Howard Fair had followed the green sprites from the bar.

  Howard Fair had perceived other criteria. For him the interval had been seven hundred years, during which he had lived in the green realm, learning to the utmost capacity of his brain. He had occupied two years training his senses to the new conditions. Gradually he learned to walk in the six basic three-dimensional directions, and accustomed himself to the fourth-dimensional short-cuts. By easy stages the blinds over his eyes were removed, so that the dazzling over-human intricacy of the landscape never completely confounded him.

  Another year was spent training him to the use of a code language-an intermediate step between the vocalizations of Earth and the meaning patterns of the green realm, where a hundred symbol-flakes (each a flitting spot of delicate iridescence) might be displayed in a single swirl of import. During this time Howard Fair's eyes and brain were altered, to allow him the use of the many new colors, without which the meaning-flakes could not be recognized.

  These were preliminary steps. For forty years he studied the flakes, of which there were almost a million. Another forty years was given to elementary permutations and shifts, and another forty to parallels, attenuation, diminishments and extensions; and during this time he was introduced to flake patterns, and certain of the more obvious displays.

  Now he was able to study without recourse to the code language, and his progress becasme more marked. Another twenty years found him able to recognize more complicated Meanings, and he was introduced to a more varied program. He floated over the field of moth-wing mosaics, which still showed the footprints of the golem. He sw
eated in embarrassment, the extent of his wicked willfulness now clear to him.

  So passed the years. Howard Fair learned as much green magic as his brain could encompass.

  He explored much of the green realm, finding so much beauty that he feared his brain might burst. He tasted, he heard, he felt, he sensed, and each one of his senses was a hundred times more discriminating than before. Nourishment came in a thousand different forms: from pink eggs which burst into a hot sweet gas, suffusing his entire body; from passing through a rain of stinging metal crystals; from simple contemplation of the proper symbol.

  Homesickness for Earth waxed and waned. Sometimes it was insupportable and he was ready to forsake all he had learned and abandon his hopes for the future. At other times the magnificence of the green realm permeated him, and the thought of departure seemed like the threat of death itself.

  By stages so gradual he never realized them he learned green magic.

  But the new faculty gave him no pride: between his crude ineptitudes and the poetic elegance of the sprites remained a tremendous gap-and he felt his innate inferiority much more keenly than he ever had in his old state. Worse, his most earnest efforts failed to improve his technique, and sometimes, observing the singing joy of an improvised manifestation by one of the sprites, and contrasting it to his own labored constructions, he felt futility and shame.

  The longer he remained in the green realm, the stronger grew the sense of his own maladroitness, and he began to long for the easy environment of Earth, where each of his acts would not shout aloud of vulgarity and crassness. At times he would watch the sprites (in the gossamer forms natural to them) at play among the pearl-petals, or twining like quick flashes of music through the forest of pink spirals. The contrast between their verve and his brutish fumbling could not be borne and he would turn away. His self-respect dwindled with each passing hour, and instead of pride in his learning, he felt a sullen ache for what he was not and could never become. The first few hundred years he worked with the enthusiasm of ignorance, for the next few he was buoyed by hope. During the last part of his time, only dogged obstinacy kept him plodding through what now he knew for infantile exercises.

  In one terrible bittersweet spasm, he gave up. He found Jaadian weaving tinkling fragments of various magics into a warp of shining long splines. With grave courtesy, Jaadian gave Fair his attention, and Fair laboriously set forth his meaning.

  Jaadian returned a message. "I recognize your discomfort, and extend my sympathy. It is best that you now return to your native home."

  He put aside his weaving and conveyed Fair down through the requisite vortices. Along the way they passed Misthemar. No nicker of meaning was expressed or exchanged, but Howard Fair thought to feel a tinge of faintly malicious amusement.

  Howard Fair sat in his apartment. His perceptions, augmented and sharpened by his sojourn in the green realm, took note of the surroundings. Only two hours before, by the clocks of Earth, he had found them both restful and stimulating; now they were neither. His books: superstition, spuriousness, earnest nonsense. His private journals and workbooks: a pathetic scrawl of infantilisms. Gravity tugged at his feet, held him rigid. The shoddy construction of the house, which heretofore he never had noticed, oppressed him. Everywhere he looked he saw slipshod disorder, primitive filth. The thought of the food he must now eat revolted him.

  He went out on his little balcony which overlooked the street. The air was impregnated with organic smells. Across the street he could look into windows where his fellow humans lived in stupid squalor.

  Fair smiled sadly. He had tried to prepare himself for these reactions, but now was surprised by their intensity. He returned into his apartment. He must accustom himself to the old environment. And after all there were compensations. The most desirable commodities of the world were now his to enjoy.

  Howard Fair plunged into the enjoyment of these pleasures. He forced himself to drink quantities of expensive wines, brandies, liqueurs, even though they offended his palate. Hunger overcame his nausea, he forced himself to the consumption of what he thought of as fried animal tissue, the hypertrophied sexual organs of plants. He experimented with erotic sensations, but found that beautiful women no longer seemed different from the plain ones, and that he could barely steel himself to the untidy contacts. He bought libraries of erudite books, glanced through them with contempt. He tried to amuse himself with his old magics; they seemed ridiculous.

  He forced himself to enjoy these pleasures for a month; then he fled the city and established a crystal bubble on a crag in the Andes. To nourish himself, he contrived a thick liquid, which, while by no means as exhilarating as the substances of the green realm, was innocent of organic contamination.

  After a certain degree of improvisation and make-shift, he arranged his life to its minimum discomfort. The view was one of austere grandeur; not even the condors came to disturb him. He sat back to ponder the chain of events which had started with his discovery of Gerald Mclntyre's workbook. He frowned. Gerald Mclntyre? He jumped to his feet, looked far over the crags.

  He found Gerald Mclntyre at a wayside service station in the heart of the South Dakota prairie. Mclntyre was sitting in an old wooden chair, tilted back against the peeling yellow paint of the service station, a straw hat shading his eyes from the sun.

  He was a magnetically handsome man, blond of hair, brown of skin, with blue eyes whose gaze stung like the touch of icicle. His left thumbnail glistened green. Fair greeted him casually; the two men surveyed each Other with wry curiosity.

  "I see you have adapted yourself," said Howard Fair.

  Mclntyre shrugged. "As well as possible. I try to maintain a balance between solitude and the pressure of humanity." He looked into the bright blue sky where crows flapped and called. "For many years I lived in isolation. I began to detest the sound of my own breathing."

  Along the highway came a glittering automobile, rococo as a hybrid goldfish. With the perceptions now available to them, Fair and Mclntyre could see the driver to be red-faced and truculent, his companion a peevish woman in expensive clothes.

  'There are other advantages to residence here," said Mclntyre. "For instance, I am able to enrich the lives of passersby with trifles of novel adventure." He made a small gesture; two dozen crows swooped down and flew beside the automobile. They settled on the fenders, strutted back and forth along the hood, fouled the windshield.

  The automobile squealed to a halt, the driver jumped out, put the birds to flight. He threw an ineffectual rock, waved his arms in outrage, returned to his car, proceeded.

  "A paltry affair," said Mclntyre with a sigh. "The truth of the matter is that I am bored." He pursed his mouth and blew forth three bright puffs of smoke: first red, then yellow, then blazing blue. "I have arrived at the estate of foolishness, as you can see."

  Fair surveyed his great-uncle with a trace of uneasiness. Mclntyre laughed. "No more pranks. I predict, however, that you will presently share my malaise."

  "I share it already," said Fair. "Sometimes I wish I could abandon all my magic and return to my former innocence."

  "I have toyed with the idea," Mclntyre replied thoughtfully. "In fact I have made all the necessary arrangements. It is really a simple matter." He led Fair to a small room behind the station. Although the door was open, the interior showed a thick darkness.

  Mclntyre, standing well back, surveyed the darkness with a quizzical curl to his lip. "You need only enter. All your magic, all your recollections of the green realm will depart. You will be no wiser than the next man you meet. And with your knowledge will go your boredom, your melancholy, your dissatisfaction."

  Fair contemplated the dark doorway. A single step would resolve his discomfort.

  He glanced at Mclntyre; the two surveyed each other with sardonic amusement. They returned to the front of the building.

  "Sometimes I stand by the door and look into the darkness," said Mclntyre. "Then I am reminded how dearly I cherish my boredom
, and what a precious commodity is so much misery,"

  Fair made himself ready for departure. "I thank you for this new wisdom, what a hundred more years in the green realm would not have taught me. And now-for a time, at least-I go back to my crag in the Andes."

  Mclntyre tilted his chair against the wall of the service station. "And I-for a time, at least-will wait for the next passerby."

  "Good-bye, then, Uncle Gerald."

  "Good-bye, Howard."

  The Ten Books

  They were as alone as it is possible for living man to be in the black gulf between the stars. Far astern shone the suns of the home worlds-ahead the outer stars and galaxies in a fainter ghostly glimmer.

  The cabin was quiet. Betty Welstead sat watching her husband at the assay table, her emotions tuned to his. When the centrifuge scale indicated heavy metal and Welstead leaned forward she leaned forward too in unconscious sympathy. When he burnt scrapings in the spectroscope and read Lead from the brightest pattern and chewed at his lips Betty released her pent-up breath, fell back in her seat.

  Ralph Welstead stood up, a man of medium height- rugged, tough-looking-with hair and skin and eyes the same tawny color. He brushed the whole clutter of rock and ore into the waste chute and Betty followed him with her eyes.

  Welstead said sourly, "We'd be millionaires if that asteroid had been inside the Solar system. Out here, unless it's pure platinum or uranium, it's not worth mining."

  Betty broached a subject which for two months had been on the top of her mind. "Perhaps we should start to swing back in."

  Welstead frowned, stepped up into the observation dome. Betty watched after him anxiously. She understood very well that the instinct of the explorer as much as the quest for minerals had brought them out so far.

  Welstead stepped back down into the cabin. "There's a star ahead"-he put a finger into the three-dimensional chart- "this one right here, Eridanus two thousand nine hundred and thirty-two. Let's make a quick check-and then we'll head back in."

  Betty nodded, suddenly happy. "Suits me." She jumped up, and together they went to the screen. He aimed the catch-all vortex, dialed the hurrying blur to stability and the star pulsed out like a white-hot coin. A single planet made up the entourage.