The Jack Vance Treasury

by Jack Vance

  “Call for Lumen,” Kerlin said.

  “Lumen!” cried Guyal. “Lumen, attend!”

  Light came to the great hall, and it proved so tall that the pilasters along the wall dwindled to threads, and so long and wide that a man might be winded to fatigue in running a dimension. Spaced in equal rows were the black cases with the copper bosses that Guyal and Shierl had noted on their entry. And above each hung five similar cases, precisely fixed, floating without support.

  “What are these?” asked Guyal in wonder.

  “Would my poor brain encompassed a hundredth part of what these banks know,” panted Kerlin. “They are great brains crammed with all that is known, experienced, achieved, or recorded by man. Here is all the lost lore, early and late, the fabulous imaginings, the history of ten million cities, beginnings of time and the presumed finalities; the reason for human existence and the reason for the reason. Daily I have labored and toiled in these banks; my achievement has been a synopsis of the most superficial sort: a panorama across a wide and multifarious country.”

  Said Shierl, “Would not the craft to destroy Blikdak be contained here?”

  “Indeed, indeed; our task would be merely to find the information. Under which casing would we search? Consider these categories: Demonlands; Killings and Mortefactions; Expositions and Dissolutions of Evil; History of Granvilunde (where such an entity was repelled); Attractive and Detractive Hyperordnets; Therapy for Hallucinants and Ghost-takers; Constructive Journal, item for regeneration of burst walls, sub-division for invasion by demons; Procedural Suggestions in Time of Risk…Aye, these and a thousand more. Somewhere is knowledge of how to smite Blikdak’s abhorred face back into his quasiplace. But where to look? There is no Index Major; none except the poor synopsis of my compilation. He who seeks specific knowledge must often go on an extended search…” His voice trailed off. Then: “Forward! Forward through the banks to the Mechanismus.”

  So through the banks they went, like roaches in a maze, and behind drifted the cage of light with the wailing ghost. At last they entered a chamber smelling of metal; again Kerlin instructed Guyal and Guyal called, “Attend us, Lumen, attend!”

  Through intricate devices walked the three, Guyal lost and rapt beyond inquiry, even though his brain ached with the want of knowing.

  At a tall booth Kerlin halted the cage of light. A pane of vitrean dropped before the ghost. “Observe now,” Kerlin said, and manipulated the activants.

  They saw the ghost, depicted and projected: the flowing robe, the haggard visage. The face grew large, flattened; a segment under the vacant eye became a scabrous white place. It separated into pustules, and a single pustule swelled to fill the pane. The crater of the pustule was an intricate stippled surface, a mesh as of fabric, knit in a lacy pattern.

  “Behold!” said Shierl. “He is a thing woven as if by thread.”

  Guyal turned eagerly to Kerlin; Kerlin raised a finger for silence. “Indeed, indeed, a goodly thought, especially since here beside us is a rotor of extreme swiftness, used in reeling the cognitive filaments of the cases…Now then observe: I reach to this panel, I select a mesh, I withdraw a thread, and note! The meshes ravel and loosen and part. And now to the bobbin on the rotor, and I wrap the thread, and now with a twist we have the cincture made…”

  Shierl said dubiously, “Does not the ghost observe and note your doing?”

  “By no means,” asserted Kerlin. “The pane of vitrean shields our actions; he is too exercised to attend. And now I dissolve the cage and he is free.”

  The ghost wandered forth, cringing from the light.

  “Go!” cried Kerlin. “Back to your genetrix; back, return and go!”

  The ghost departed. Kerlin said to Guyal, “Follow; find when Blikdak snuffs him up.”

  Guyal at a cautious distance watched the ghost seep up into the black nostril, and returned to where Kerlin waited by the rotor. “The ghost has once more become part of Blikdak.”

  “Now then,” said Kerlin, “we cause the rotor to twist, the bobbin to whirl, and we shall observe.”

  The rotor whirled to a blur; the bobbin (as long as Guyal’s arm) became spun with ghost-thread, at first glowing pastel polychrome, then nacre, then fine milk-ivory.

  The rotor spun, a million times a minute, and the thread drawn unseen and unknown from Blikdak thickened on the bobbin.

  The rotor spun; the bobbin was full—a cylinder shining with glossy silken sheen. Kerlin slowed the rotor; Guyal snapped a new bobbin into place, and the unraveling of Blikdak continued.

  Three bobbins—four—five—and Guyal, observing Blikdak from afar, found the giant face quiescent, the mouth working and sucking, creating the clacking sound which had first caused them apprehension.

  Eight bobbins. Blikdak opened his eyes, stared in puzzlement around the chamber.

  Twelve bobbins: a discolored spot appeared on the sagging cheek, and Blikdak quivered in uneasiness.

  Twenty bobbins: the spot spread across Blikdak’s visage, across the slanted fore-dome, and his mouth hung lax; he hissed and fretted.

  Thirty bobbins: Blikdak’s head seemed stale and putrid; the gunmetal sheen had become an angry maroon, the eyes bulged, the mouth hung open, the tongue lolled limp.

  Fifty bobbins: Blikdak collapsed. His dome lowered against the febrile mouth; his eyes shone like feverish coals.

  Sixty bobbins: Blikdak was no more.

  And with the dissolution of Blikdak so dissolved Jeldred, the demonland created for the housing of evil. The breach in the wall gave on barren rock, unbroken and rigid.

  And in the Mechanismus sixty shining bobbins lay stacked neat; the evil so disorganized glowed with purity and iridescence.

  Kerlin fell back against the wall. “I expire; my time has come. I have guarded well the Museum; together we have won it away from Blikdak…Attend me now. Into your hands I pass the curacy; now the Museum is your charge to guard and preserve.”

  “For what end?” asked Shierl. “Earth expires, almost as you…Wherefore knowledge?”

  “More now than ever,” gasped Kerlin. “Attend: the stars are bright, the stars are fair; the banks know blessed magic to fleet you to youthful climes. Now—I go. I die.”

  “Wait!” cried Guyal. “Wait, I beseech!”

  “Why wait?” whispered Kerlin. “The way to peace is on me; you call me back?”

  “How do I extract from the banks?”

  “The key to the index is in my chambers, the index of my life…” And Kerlin died.

  Guyal and Shierl climbed to the upper ways and stood outside the portal on the ancient flagged floor. It was night; the marble shone faintly underfoot, the broken columns loomed on the sky.

  Across the plain the yellow lights of Saponce shone warm through the trees; above in the sky shone the stars.

  Guyal said to Shierl, “There is your home; there is Saponce. Do you wish to return?”

  She shook her head. “Together we have looked through the eyes of knowledge. We have seen old Thorsingol, and the Sherrit Empire before it, and Golwan Andra before that and the Forty Kades even before. We have seen the warlike green-men, and the knowledgeable Pharials and the Clambs who departed Earth for the stars, as did the Merioneth before them and the Gray Sorcerers still earlier. We have seen oceans rise and fall, the mountains crust up, peak and melt in the beat of rain; we have looked on the sun when it glowed hot and full and yellow…No, Guyal, there is no place for me at Saponce…”

  Guyal, leaning back on the weathered pillar, looked up to the stars. “Knowledge is ours, Shierl—all of knowing to our call. And what shall we do?”

  Together they looked up to the white stars.

  “What shall we do…”

  Afterword to “Guyal of Sfere”

  I wrote while I was at sea. I did this Dying Earth thing…I wrote that, sitting looking out over the water, and then I got tired of that particular life for various reasons.

  —Jack Vance 1983

  Noise


  I

  Captain Hess placed a notebook on the desk and hauled a chair up under his sturdy buttocks. Pointing to the notebook, he said, “That’s the property of your man Evans. He left it aboard the ship.”

  Galispell asked in faint surprise, “There was nothing else? No letter?”

  “No, sir, not a thing. That notebook was all he had when we picked him up.”

  Galispell rubbed his fingers along the scarred fibers of the cover. “Understandable, I suppose.” He flipped back the cover. “Hmmmm.”

  Hess said tentatively, “What’s been your opinion of Evans? Rather a strange chap?”

  “Howard Evans? No, not at all. He’s been a very valuable man to us.” He considered Captain Hess reflectively. “Exactly how do you mean ‘strange’?”

  Hess frowned, searching for the precise picture of Evans’ behavior. “I guess you might say erratic, or maybe emotional.”

  Galispell was genuinely startled. “Howard Evans?”

  Hess’ eyes went to the notebook. “I took the liberty of looking through his log, and—well—”

  “And you got the impression he was—strange.”

  Hess flushed stubbornly. “Maybe everything he writes is true. But I’ve been poking into odd corners of space all my life and I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Peculiar situation,” said Galispell in a neutral voice. He looked thoughtfully at the notebook.

  II

  Journal of Howard Charles Evans

  I commence this journal without pessimism but certainly without optimism. I feel as if I have already died once. My time in the lifeboat was at least a foretaste of death. I flew on and on through the dark, and a coffin could be only slightly more cramped. The stars were above, below, ahead, astern. I have no clock, and I can put no duration to my drifting. It was more than a week, it was less than a year.

  So much for space, the lifeboat, the stars. There are not too many pages in this journal. I will need them all to chronicle my life on this world which, rising up under me, gave me life.

  There is much to tell and many ways in the telling. There is myself, my own response to this rather dramatic situation. But lacking the knack for tracing the contours and contortions of my psyche, I will try to detail events as objectively as possible.

  I landed the lifeboat on as favorable a spot as I had opportunity to select. I tested the atmosphere, temperature, pressure and biology; then I ventured outside. I rigged an antenna and dispatched my first SOS.

  Shelter is no problem; the lifeboat serves me as a bed, and, if necessary, a refuge. From sheer boredom later on I may fell a few of these trees and build a house. But I will wait; there is no urgency.

  A stream of pure water trickles past the lifeboat; I have abundant concentrated food. As soon as the hydroponic tanks begin to produce there will be fresh fruits and vegetables and yeast proteins—

  Survival seems no particular problem.

  The sun is a ball of dark crimson, and casts hardly more light than the full moon of Earth. The lifeboat rests on a meadow of thick black-green creeper, very pleasant underfoot. A hundred yards distant in the direction I shall call south lies a lake of inky water, and the meadow slopes smoothly down to the water’s edge. Tall sprays of rather pallid vegetation—I had best use the word ‘trees’—bound the meadow on either side.

  Behind is a hillside, which possibly continues into a range of mountains; I can’t be sure. This dim red light makes vision uncertain after the first few hundred feet.

  The total effect is one of haunted desolation and peace. I would enjoy the beauty of the situation if it were not for the uncertainties of the future.

  The breeze drifts across the lake, smelling pleasantly fragrant, and it carries a whisper of sound from off the waves.

  I have assembled the hydroponic tanks and set out cultures of yeast. I shall never starve nor die of thirst. The lake is smooth and inviting; perhaps in time I will build a little boat. The water is warm, but I dare not swim. What could be more terrible than to be seized from below and dragged under?

  There is probably no basis for my misgivings. I have seen no animal life of any kind: no birds, fish, insects, crustacea. The world is one of absolute quiet, except for the whispering breeze.

  The scarlet sun hangs in the sky, remaining in place during many of my sleeps. I see it is slowly westering; after this long day how long and how monotonous will be the night!

  I have sent off four SOS sequences; somewhere a monitor station must catch them.

  A machete is my only weapon, and I have been reluctant to venture far from the lifeboat. Today (if I may use the word) I took my courage in my hands and started around the lake. The trees are rather like birches, tall and supple. I think the bark and leaves would shine a clear silver in light other than this wine-colored gloom. Along the lakeshore they stand in a line, almost as if long ago they had been planted by a wandering gardener. The tall branches sway in the breeze, glinting scarlet with purple overtones, a strange and wonderful picture which I am alone to see.

  I have heard it said that enjoyment of beauty is magnified in the presence of others: that a mysterious rapport comes into play to reveal subtleties which a single mind is unable to grasp. Certainly as I walked along the avenue of trees with the lake and the scarlet sun behind, I would have been grateful for companionship—but I believe that something of peace, the sense of walking in an ancient abandoned garden, would be lost.

  The lake is shaped like an hour-glass; at the narrow waist I could look across and see the squat shape of the lifeboat. I sat down under a bush, which continually nodded red and black flowers in front of me.

  Mist fibrils drifted across the lake and the wind made low musical sounds.

  I rose to my feet, continued around the lake.

  I passed through forests and glades and came once more to my lifeboat.

  I went to tend my hydroponic tanks, and I think the yeast had been disturbed, prodded at curiously.

  The dark red sun is sinking. Every day—it must be clear that I use ‘day’ as the interval between my sleeps—finds it lower in the sky. Night is almost upon me, long night. How shall I spend my time in the dark?

  I have no gauge other than my mind, but the breeze seems colder. It brings long mournful chords to my ears, very sad, very sweet. Mist-wraiths go fleeting across the meadow.

  Wan stars already show themselves, nameless ghost-lamps without significance.

  I have been considering the slope behind my meadow; tomorrow I think I will make the ascent.

  I have plotted the position of every article I possess. I will be gone some hours; and—if a visitor meddles with my goods, I will know his presence for certain.

  The sun is low, the air pinches at my cheeks. I must hurry if I wish to return while light still shows me the landscape. I picture myself lost; I see myself wandering the face of this world, groping for my precious lifeboat, my tanks, my meadow.

  Anxiety, curiosity, obstinacy all spurring me, I set off up the slope at a half-trot.

  Becoming winded almost at once, I slowed my pace. The turf of the lakeshore had disappeared; I was walking on bare rock and lichen. Below me the meadow became a patch, my lifeboat a gleaming spindle. I watched for a moment. Nothing stirred anywhere in my range of vision.

  I continued up the slope and finally breasted the ridge. A vast rolling valley fell off below me. Far away a range of great mountains stood into the dark sky. The wine-colored light slanting in from the west lit the prominences, the frontal sallies and bluffs, left the valleys in gloom: an alternate sequence of red and black beginning far in the west, continuing past, far to the east.

  I looked down behind me, down to my own meadow, and was hard put to find it in the fading light. Ah, there it was! And there, the lake, a sprawling hour-glass. Beyond was dark forest, then a strip of old rose savannah, then a dark strip of woodland, then delicate laminae of colorings to the horizon.

  The sun touched the edge of the mountains, and with wha
t seemed almost a sudden lurch, fell half below the horizon. I turned down-slope; a terrible thing to be lost in the dark. My eye fell upon a white object, a hundred yards along the ridge. I stared, and walked nearer. Gradually it assumed form: a thimble, a cone, a pyramid—a cairn of white rocks. I walked forward with feet achingly heavy.

  A cairn, certainly. I stood looking down on it.

  I turned, looked over my shoulder. Nothing in view. I looked down to the meadow. Swift shapes? I strained through the gathering murk. Nothing.

  I tore at the cairn, threw rocks aside. What was below?

  Nothing.

  In the ground a faintly-marked rectangle three feet long was perceptible. I stood back. No power I knew of could induce me to dig into that soil.

  The sun was disappearing. Already at the south and north the afterglow began, lees of wine: the sun moved with astounding rapidity; what manner of sun was this, dawdling at the meridian, plunging below the horizon?

  I turned down-slope, but darkness came faster. The scarlet sun was gone; in the west was the sad sketch of departed flame. I stumbled, I fell. I looked into the east. A marvellous zodiacal light was forming, a strengthening blue triangle.

  I watched, from my hands and knees. A cusp of bright blue lifted into the sky. A moment later a flood of sapphire washed the landscape. A new sun of intense indigo rose into the sky.

  The world was the same and yet different; where my eyes had been accustomed to red and the red subcolors, now I saw the intricate cycle of blue.

  When I returned to my meadow the breeze carried a new sound: bright chords that my mind could almost form into melody. For a moment I so amused myself, and thought to see dance-motion in the wisps of vapor which for the last few days had been noticeable over my meadow.

  In what I will call a peculiar frame of mind I crawled into the lifeboat and went to sleep.