The Narrow Land

by Jack Vance

  Ditmar pulled up a chair, punched the service button, ordered beer. Without preamble he said, "It costs eight thousand. It costs you eight thousand, that is. There's two levels.

  Type A costs ten million; Type B, ten thousand, but they'll take eight. Needless to say, none of us can go two and a half million, so you're signed up on the Type B schedule."

  Zaer grimaced. "Don't like the sound of it. It's like a fun house at the carnival. Some of 'Em go through the bumps, others stand around watching, waiting for somebody's dress to blow up. And there's the lad who turns the valves, throws the switches. He has the real fun."

  Ditmar said, "I've already paid the eight thousand, so you fellows can write me checks. We might as well get that part over now, while I've got you all within reach."

  He tucked the checks from Mario, Janniver and Breaugh into his wallet. "Thanks." He turned to Zaer. "This evening at six o'clock, go to this address." He pushed a card across the table. "Give whoever answers the door this card."

  Breaugh and Mario, on either side of Zaer, leaned over, scrutinized the card along with Zaer. It read:

  THE CHATEAU D*IF 5600 Exmoor Avenue Meadowlands In the corner were scribbled the words: "Zaer, by Sutlow."

  "I had to work like blazes to get it," said Ditmar. "It seems they're keeping it exclusive. I had to swear to all kinds of things about you. Now for heaven's sake, Zaer, don't turn out to be an ACP agent or I'm done with Sutlow, and he's my boss."

  "ACP?" Zaer raised his eyebrows. "Is it-illegal?"

  "I don't know," said Ditmar. "That's what I'm spending two thousand dollars on you for."

  "I hope you have a damn good memory," said Breaugh with a cool grin. "Because-if you live-I want two thousand dollars' worth of vicarious adventure."

  "If I die," retorted Zaer, "buy yourself a Ouija board; I'll still give you your money's worth."

  "Now," said Ditmar, "well meet here Tuesdays and Fridays at three-right, fellows?"-he glanced around the faces-"until you show up."

  Zaer rose. "Okay. Tuesdays and Fridays at three. Be seeing you." He waved a hand that took in them all, and stumbling slightly, walked away.

  "Poor kid," said Breaugh. "He's scared stiff."

  Tuesday passed. Friday passed. Another Tuesday, another Friday, and Tuesday came again. Mario, Ditmar, Breaugh, Janniver reached their table at three o'clock, and with subdued greetings, took their seats.

  Five minutes, ten minutes passed. Conversation trickled to a halt. Janniver sat square to the table, big arms resting beside his beer, occasionally scratching at his short yellow hair, or rubbing his blunt nose. Breaugh, slouched back in the seat, looked sightlessly out through the passing crowds. Ditmar smoked passively, and Mario twirled and balanced a bit of paper he had rolled into a cylinder.

  At three-fifteen Janniver cleared his throat "I guess he went crazy."

  Breaugh grunted. Ditmar smiled a trifle. Mario lit a cigarette, scowled.

  Janniver said, "I saw him today."

  Six eyes swung to him. "Where?"

  "I wasn't going to mention it," said Janniver, "unless he failed to show up today. He's living at the Atlantic-Empire- a suite on the twentieth floor. I bribed the clerk and found that he's been there over a week."

  Breaugh said with a wrinkled forehead, eyes black and suspicious, "How did you happen to see him there?"

  "I went to check their books. It's on my route. On my way out, I saw Zaer in the lobby, big as life."

  "Did he see you?"

  Janniver shrugged woodenly. "Possibly. I'm not sure. He seemed rather wrapped up in a woman, an expensive-looking woman."

  "Humph," said Ditmar. "Looks like Zaer's got our money's worth, all right."

  Breaugh rose. "Let's go call on him, find out why he hasn't been to see us." He turned to Janniver. "Is he registered under his own name?"

  Janniver nodded his long heavy head. "As big as life."

  Breaugh started away, halted, looked from face to face. "You fellows coming?"

  "Yes," said Mario. He rose. So did Ditmar and Janniver.

  The Atlantic-Empire Hotel was massive and elegant, equipped with every known device for the feeding, bathing, comforting, amusing, flattering, relaxing, stimulating, assuaging of the men and women able to afford the price.

  At the entry a white-coated flunky took the wraps of the most casual visitor, brushed him, offered the woman corsages from an iced case. The hall into the lobby was as hushed as the nave of a cathedral, lined with thirtyfoot mirrors. A moving carpet took the guest into the lobby, a great hall in the Gloriana style of fifty years before. An arcade of small shops lined one wall. Here-if the guest cared little for expense-he could buy wrought copper, gold, tantalum; gowns in glowing fabrics of scarlet, purple, indigo; objets from ancient Tibet and the products of Novacraft; cabochons of green Jovian opals, sold by the milligram, blue balticons from Mars, fire diamonds brought from twenty miles under the surface of the Earth; Marathesti cherries preserved in Organdy Liqueur, perfumes pressed from Arctic moss, white marmorea blooms like the ghosts of beautiful women.

  Another entire wall was a single glass panel, the side of the hotel's main swimming pool. Underwater shone blue-green, and there was the splash, the shining wet gold of swimming bodies. The furniture of the lobby was in shades of the same blue-green and gold, with intimacy provided by screens of vines covered with red, black and white blossoms. A golden light suffused the air, heightened the illusion of an enchanted world where people moved in a high-keyed milieu of expensive clothes, fabulous jewelry, elegant wit, careful lovemaking.

  Breaugh looked about with a twisted mouth. "Horrible parasites, posing and twittering and debauching each other while the rest of the world works!"

  "Oh, come now," said Ditmar. "Don't be so all-fired intense. They're the only ones left who are having any fun."

  "I doubt it," said Breaugh. "They're as defeated and futile as anyone else. There's no more place for them to go than there is for us."

  "Have you heard of the Empyrean Tower?"

  "Oh-vaguely. Some tremendous building out in Meadow-lands."

  "That's right. A tower three miles high. Somebody's having fun with that project. Designing it, seeing it go up, up, up."

  "There's four billion people in the world," said Breaugh. "Only one Empyrean Tower."

  "What kind of a world would it be without extremes?" asked Ditmar. "A place like the inside of a filing cabinet. Breathe the air here. It's rich, smells of civilization, tradition."

  Mario glanced in surprise at Ditmar, the saturnine wry Ditmar, whom he would have considered the first to sneer at the foibles of the elite.

  Janniver said mildly, "I enjoy coming here, myself. In a way, it's an adventure, a look into a different world." Breaugh snorted. "Only a millionaire can do anything more than look."

  "The mass standard of living rises continuously," reflected Mario. "And almost at the same rate the number of millionaires drops. Whether we like it or not, the extremes are coming closer together. In fact, they've almost met."

  "And life daily becomes more like a bowl of rich, nourishing mush-without salt," said Ditmar. "By all means abolish poverty, but let's keep our millionaires... . Oh, well, we came here to find Zaer, not to argue sociology. I suppose we might as well all go together."

  They crossed the lobby. The desk clerk, a handsome silver-haired man with a grave face, bowed.

  "Is Mr. Zaer in?" Ditmar asked.

  'I'll call his suite, sir." A moment later: "No, sir, he doesn't answer. Shall I page him?"

  "No," said Ditmar. "We'll look around a bit."

  "About an hour ago I believe he crossed the lobby toward the Mauna Hiva. You might try there."

  "Thanks."

  The Mauna Hiva was a circular room. At its center rose a great mound of weathered rock, overgrown with palms, ferns, a tangle of exotic plants. Three coconut palms slanted across the island, and the whole was lit with a soft watery white light. Below was a bar built of waxed tropical woods, and beyond, at th
e periphery of the illumination, a ring of tables.

  They found Zaer quickly. He sat with a dark-haired woman in the sheath of emerald silk. On the table in front of them moved a number of small glowing many-colored shapes-sparkling, flashing, intense as patterns cut from butterfly wings. It was a ballet, projected in three-dimensional miniature. Tiny figures leaped, danced, posed to entrancing music in a magnificent setting of broken marble columns and Appian cypress trees.

  After a moment the four stood back, watching in dour amusement.

  Breaugh nudged Mario. "By heaven, he acts like he's been doing it all his life!"

  Ditmar advanced to the table; the girl turned her long opaque eyes up at him. Zaer glanced up blankly.

  "Hello there, Zaer," said Ditmar, a sarcastic smile wreathing his lips. "Have you forgotten your old pals of the Oxonian Terrace?"

  Zaer stared blankly. I'm sorry."

  "I suppose you don't know us?" asked Breaugh looking down his long crooked nose.

  Zaer pushed a hand through his mop of curly black hair. I'm afraid you have the advantage of me, gentlemen."

  "Humph," said Breaugh. "Let's get this straight. You're Pete Zaer, are you not?"

  "Yes, I am."

  Janniver interposed, "Perhaps you'd prefer to speak with us alone?"

  Zaer blinked. "Not at all. Go ahead, say it." "Ever heard of the Chateau d'lf ?" inquired Breaugh acidly. "And eight thousand dollars?" added Ditmar. "A joint investment, shall we say?"

  Zaer frowned in what Mario could have sworn to be honest bewilderment.

  "You believe that I owe you eight thousand dollars?" "Either that, or eight thousand dollars' worth of information."

  Zaer shrugged. "Eight thousand dollars?" He reached into his breast pocket, pulled out a bill-fold, counted. "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. There you are, gentlemen. Whatever it's for, I'm sure I don't know. Maybe I was drunk." He handed eight thousand-dollar bills to the rigid Ditmar. "Anyway now you're satisfied and I hope you'll be good enough to leave." He gestured to the tiny figures, swaying, posturing, to the rapturous music. "We've already missed the Devotional Dance, the main reason we tuned it on."

  "Zaer," said Mario haltingly. The gay youthful eyes swung to him.

  "Yes?-politely.

  "Is this all the report we get? After all, we acted in good faith."

  Zaer stared back coldly. "You have eight thousand dollars. I don't know you from Adam's off ox. You claim it, I pay it. That's pretty good faith on my part."

  Breaugh pulled at Mario's arm. "Let's go."

  Chapter III

  Blind Plunge

  Soberly they sat at a table in an unpretentious tavern, drinking beer. For a while none of the four spoke. Four silent figures - tall strong Janniver, with the rough features, the Baltic hah-, the African fiber, the Oriental restraint; Breaugh, the nimble-eyed, black browed and long-nosed; Ditmar, the sardonic autumn-colored man with the sick liver; Mario, normal, modest, pleasant.

  Mario spoke first. "If that's what eight thousand buys at the Chateau d'lf, I'll volunteer."

  "If," said Breaugh shortly.

  "It's not reasonable," rumbled Janniver. Among them, his emotions were probably the least disturbed, his sense of order and fitness the most outraged.

  Breaugh struck the table with his fist, a light blow, but nevertheless vehement. "It's not reasonable! It violates logic."

  "Your logic," Ditmar pointed out.

  Breaugh cocked his head sideways. "What's yours?"

  "I haven't any."

  "I maintain that the Chateau d'lf is an enterprise," said Breaugh. "At the fee they charged, I figured it for a money-making scheme. It looks like I'm wrong. Zaer was broke a month ago. Or almost so. We gave him eight thousand dollars. He goes to the Chateau d'lf, he comes out, takes a suite at the Atlantic-Empire, buys an expensive woman, shoves money at us by the fistful. The only place he could have got it is at the Chateau d'lf. Now there's no profit in that kind of business."

  "Some of them pay ten million dollars," said Mario softly. "That could take up some of the slack."

  Ditmar drank his beer. "What now? Want to shake again?"

  No one spoke. At last Breaugh said, "Frankly, I'm afraid to."

  Mario raised his eyebrows. "What? With Zaer's climb to riches right in front of you?"

  "Odd," mused Breaugh, "that's just what he was saying. That he was one of the meteoric schoolboy wonders who hadn't meteored yet. Now he'll probably turn out to be an unsung genius."

  "The Chateau still sounds good, if that's what it does for you."

  "If," sneered Breaugh.

  "If," assented Mario mildly.

  Ditmar said with a harsh chuckle, "I've got eight thousand dollars here. Our mutual property. As far as I'm concerned, it's all yours, if you want to take on Zaer's assignment."

  Breaugh and Janniver gave acquiescent shrugs.

  Mario toyed with the idea. His life was idle, useless. He dabbled in architecture, played handball, slept, ate. A pleasant but meaningless existence. He rose to his feet. "I'm on my way, right now. Give me the eight thousand before I change my mind."

  "Here you are," said Ditmar. "Er-in spite of Zaer's example, we'll expect a report, Tuesdays and Fridays at three, on the Oxonian Terrace."

  Mario waved gaily, as he pushed out the door into the late afternoon. "Tuesdays and Fridays at three. Be seeing you."

  Ditmar shook his head. "I doubt it."

  Breaugh compressed his mouth. "I doubt it too."

  Janniver merely shook his head....

  Exmoor Avenue began in Lanchester, in front of the Power Bank, on the fourth level, swung north, rose briefly to the fifth level where it crossed the Continental Highway, curved back to the west, slanted under Grimshaw Boulevard, dropped to the surface in Meadowlands.

  Mario found 5600 Exmoor to be a gray block of a building, not precisely dilapidated, but evidently unloved and uncared-for. A thin indecisive strip of lawn separated it from the road, and a walkway led to a small excrescence of a portico.

  With the level afternoon sun shining full on his back, Mario walked to the portico, pressed the button.

  A moment passed, then the door slid aside, revealing a short hall. "Please come in," said the soft voice of a commercial welcome-box.

  Mario advanced down the hall, aware that radiation was scanning his body for metal or weapons. The hall opened into a green and brown reception room, furnished with a leather settee, a desk, a painting of three slim wide-eyed nudes against a background of a dark forest. A door flicked back, a young woman entered.

  Mario tightened his mouth. It was an adventure to look at the girl. She was amazingly beautiful, with a beauty that grew more poignant the longer he considered it. She was silent, small-boned. Her eyes were cool, direct, her jaw and chin fine and firm. She was beautiful in herself, without ornament, ruse or adornment; beautiful almost in spite of herself, as if she regretted the magic of her face. Mario felt cool detachment in her gaze, an impersonal unfriendliness. Human perversity immediately aroused in his brain a desire to shatter the indifference, to arouse passion of one sort or another.... He smothered the impulse. He was here on business.

  "Your name, please?" Her voice was soft, with a fine grain to it, like precious wood, and pitched in a strange key.

  "Roland Mario."

  She wrote on a form. "Age?"

  'Twenty-nine."

  "Occupation?"

  "Architect."

  "What do you want here?"

  "This is the Chateau d'lf?"

  "Yes." She waited, expectantly.

  "I'm a customer."

  "Who sent you?"

  "No one. I'm a friend of Pete Zaer's. He was here a couple of weeks ago."

  She nodded, wrote.

  "He seems to have done pretty well for himself," observed Mario cheerfully.

  She said nothing until she had finished writing. Then: "This is a business, operated for profit. We are interested in money. How much do you have to spend?
"

  "I'd like to know what you have to sell."

  "Adventure." She said the word without accent or emphasis.

  "Ah," said Mario. "I see... . Out of curiosity, how does working here affect you? Do you find it an adventure, or are you bored too?"

  She shot him a quick glance. "We offer two classes of service. The first we value at ten million dollars. It is cheap at that price, but it is the dullest and least stirring of the two-the situation over which you have some control. The second we value at ten thousand dollars, and this produces the most extreme emotions with the minimum of immediate control on your part."

  Mario considered the word "immediate." He asked, "Have you been through the treatment?"

  Again the cool flick of a glance. "Would you care to indicate how much you wish to spend?" "I asked you a question," said Mario.

  "You will receive further information inside."

  "Are you human?" asked Mario. "Do you breathe?"

  "Would you care to indicate how much you have to spend?"

  Mario shrugged. "I have eight thousand dollars with me." He pursed his lips. "And I'll give you a thousand to stick your tongue out at me."

  She dropped the form into a slot, arose. "Follow me, please."

  She led him through the door, along a hall, into a small room, bare and stark, lit by a single cone-shaped floor lamp turned against the ceiling, a room painted white, gray, green. A man sat at a desk punching a calculator. Behind him stood a filing cabinet. There was a faint odor in the air, like mingled mint, gardenias, with a hint of an antiseptic, medicinal scent

  The man looked up, rose to his feet, bowed his head politely. He was young, blond as beach-sand, as magnificently handsome as the girl was beautiful. Mario felt a slight edge form in his brain. One at a time they were admirable, their beauty seemed natural. Together, the beauty cloyed, as if it were something owned and valued highly. It seemed self-conscious and vulgar. And Mario suddenly felt a quiet pride in his own commonplace person.

  The man was taller than Mario by several inches. His chest was smooth and wide corded with powerful sinew. In spite of almost over-careful courtesy, he gave an impression of overpowering, overriding confidence.