Nopalgarth

by Jack Vance

  "That's the difficulty," said Hableyat, "in dealing with men of limited intellect. They cannot be trusted for logical performance. A thousand times would I prefer to wrestle with a genius. His methods, at least, would be understandable… If Erru Kametin sees him all my plans will be defeated. Oh," he groaned, "the bull-headed fool!"

  Juliam sniffed but held his tongue. Hableyat spoke incisively. "You go—look along the arcade. If you see him send him back quickly. I'll wait here. Then telephone Erru Kametin—he'll be at the Consulate. Identify yourself as Aglom Fourteen. He will inquire further and you will reveal that you were an agent for Empoing, who is now dead—that you have important information for his ears.

  "He will wish you to appear but you will profess fear of Druid counteraction. You will tell him that you have definitely identified the courier, that he will be traveling with the article in question on the Belsaurion. You will give a quick description of this man and then return here."

  "Yes, Lord."

  Joe heard the shuffle of Juliana's feet. He slid back, ducked behind a long blue carryall, rose to his feet. He saw Juliam cross the field, then by a roundabout route he returned to the car, entered.

  Hableyat's eyes were glittering but he said in a careless tone, "So there you are, young man. Where have you been?… Ah, new garments, I see. Very wise, very wise, though of course it was rash to appear along the arcade."

  He reached into his pouch, came out with an envelope. "Here is your ticket, Ballenkarch via Junction."

  "Junction? What or where is Junction?"

  Hableyat put the tips of his fingers together, said in a tone of exaggerated precision, "Kyril, Mangtse and Ballenkarch, as you may be aware, form a triangle approximately equilateral. Junction is an artificial satellite at its center. It is also situated along the Mangtse-Thombol-Beland traffic lane and, at a perpendicular, along the Frums-Outer System passage and so makes a very convenient way station or transfer point.

  "It is an interesting place from many aspects. The unique method of construction, the extremities of the efforts made to entertain visitors, the famous Junction Gardens, the cosmopolitan nature of the people encountered there. I'm sure you will find it an interesting voyage."

  "I imagine I shall," said Joe.

  "There will be spies aboard —everywhere, indeed, there are spies. One cannot move his foot without kicking a spy. Their instructions in regard to you may or may not include violence. I counsel the utmost vigilance —though, as is well known, a skillful assassin cannot be denied opportunity."

  Joe said with grim good-humor, "I've got a gun." Hableyat met his eyes with limpid innocence. "Good —excellent. Now the ship leaves almost any minute. You had better get aboard. I won't go with you but wish you good luck from here."

  Joe jumped to the ground. "Thanks for your efforts," he said evenly.

  Hableyat raised a monitory hand. "No thanks, please. I'm glad that I'm able to assist a fellow-man when he's in trouble. Although there is a slight service I'd like you to render me. I've promised my friend, the Prince of Ballenkarch, a sample of the lovely Kyril heather and perhaps you will convey him this little pot with my regards."

  Hableyat displayed a plant growing in an earthenware pot. "I'll put it in this bag. Please be careful with it. Water it once a week if you will."

  Joe accepted the potted plant. A hoot from the ship's horn rang across the field. "Hurry then," said Hableyat. "Perhaps we'll meet again some day."

  "Goodby," said Joe. He turned, walked toward the ship, anxious now to embark.

  Last-minute passengers were crossing the field from the station. Joe stared at a couple not fifty feet distant —a tall broad-shouldered young man with the face of a malicious satyr, a slender dark-haired girl—Manaolo and the Priestess Elfane.

  V

  THE SKELETON-WORK of the embarkation stage made a black web on the overcast sky. Joe climbed the worn plank stairs to the top deck. No one was behind. No one observed him. He reached under an L-beam, set the potted plant on the flange out of sight. Whatever it was, it was dangerous. He wanted nothing to do with it. Hableyat's quid pro quos might come high.

  Joe smiled sourly. "Limited intellect" and "bull-headed fool"—there was an ancient aphorism, to the effect that eavesdroppers hear no good of themselves. It seemed to apply in his own case.

  Joe thought, I've been called worse things. And once I get to Ballenkarch it won't make any difference...

  Ahead of him Manaolo and Elfane crossed the stage, straight ahead with that fixed and conscious will characteristic of the Druids. They climbed the gangplank, turned into the ship. Joe grimaced. Elfane's slim legs twinkling up the stairs had sent sweet-sour chills along his nerves. And the proud back of Manaolo—it was like taking two drugs with precisely opposite effects.

  Joe cursed old Hableyat. Did he imagine that Joe would be so obsessed with infatuation for the Priestess Elfane as to challenge Manaolo? Joe snorted. Overripe old hypocrite! In the first place he had no slightest intimation that Elfane would consider him as a lover. And after Manaolo's handling of her—his stomach muscles twisted. Even, he amended dutifully, if his loyalty to Margaret would permit his interest. He had enough problems of his own without inviting others.

  At the gangplank stood a steward in a red skin-tight uniform. Rows of trefoil gold frogs decorated his legs, a radio was clamped to his ear with a mike pressed to his throat. He was a member of a race strange to Joe—white-haired, loose-jointed, with eyes as green as emeralds.

  Joe felt the tenseness rising up in himself, if the Thearch suspected that he were on his way off-planet, now he would be stopped.

  The steward took his ticket, nodded courteously, motioned him within. Joe crossed the gangplank to the convex black hulk, entered the shadowed double port. At a temporary desk sat the purser, another man of the white-haired race. Like the steward he wore a scarlet suit which seemed like a second skin. In addition he wore glass epaulets and a small scarlet skullcap.

  He extended a book to Joe. "Your name and thumbprint, please. They waive responsibility for accidents incurred on route."

  Joe signed, pressed his thumb on the indicated square while the purser examined his ticket. "First class passage, Cabin Fourteen. Luggage, Worship?"

  "I have none," said Joe. "I imagine there's a ship's store where I can buy linen."

  "Yes, your Worship, yes indeed. Now, if you'll kindly step to your cabin, a steward will secure you for takeoff."

  Joe glanced down at the book he had signed. Immediately before his signature he read in a tall angular hand, Druid Manaolo kia Benlodieth, and then in a round backhand script, Alnietho kia Benlodieth. Signed as his wife—Joe chewed at his lip. Manaolo was assigned to Cabin Twelve, Elfane to 13.

  Not strange in itself. These freighter-passenger ships, unlike the great passenger packets flashing out from Earth in every direction, offered little accommodation for passengers. Cabins, so-called, were closets with hammocks, drawers, tiny collapsible bathroom facilities.

  A steward in the skin-tight garment, this time a firefly blue, said, "This way, Lord Smith."

  Joe thought—to excite reverence all a man needed was a tin hat.

  He followed the steward past the hold, where the steerage passengers already lay entranced and bundled into their hammocks, then through a combination saloon-dining room. The far wall was faced with two tiers of doors, with a web-balcony running under the second tier. No. 14 was the last door on the top row.

  As the steward led Joe past No. 13 the door was thrust aside and Manaolo came bursting out. His face was pale, his eyes widened to curious elliptical shape, showing the full disk of the dead black retina's. He was plainly in a blind fury. He shouldered Joe aside, opened the door to No. 12, passed within.

  Joe slowly pulled himself back from the rail. For an instant all sense, all reason, had left him. It was a curious sensation—one unknown to him before. An unlimited elemental aversion which even Harry Creath had never aroused. He turned slowly back along the catwalk.<
br />
  Elfane stood in the door of her cabin. She had removed the blue cloak and stood in her soft white dress —a dark-haired girl with a narrow face, mobile and alive, now clenched in anger. Her eyes met Joe's. For an instant they stared eye to eye, faces two feet apart.

  The hate in Joe's heart moved over for another emotion, a wonderful lift into clean air, a delight, a ferment. Her eyebrows contracted in puzzlement, she half-opened her mouth to speak. Joe wondered with a queer sinking feeling, if she recognized him? Their previous contacts had been so careless, so impersonal. He was a new man in his new clothes.

  She turned, shut the door. Joe continued to No. 14, where the steward webbed him into his hammock for the take-off.

  Joe awoke from the take-off trance. He said, "Whatever you're looking for, I haven't got it. Hableyat gave you a bum steer."

  The man across the cabin froze into stillness, back turned toward Joe.

  Joe said, "Don't move, I've got my gun on you."

  He jerked up from the hammock but the webbing held him. At the sound of his efforts the intruder stole a glance over his shoulder, ducked, slid from the cabin like a ghost.

  Joe called out harshly but there was no sound. Throwing off the web he ran to the door, looked out into the saloon. It was empty.

  Joe turned back, shut the door. Waking from the trance he had no clear picture of his visitor. A man short and stocky, moving on joints set at curious splayed angles. There had been a flashing glimpse of the man's face but all Joe could recall was a sallow yellow tinge as if the underlying blood ran bright yellow. A Mang.

  Joe thought, Now it's starting. Damn Hableyat, setting me up as his stalking horse! He considered reporting to the captain, who, neither Druid nor Mang, might be unsympathetic to lawlessness aboard his ship. He decided against the action. He had nothing to report—merely a prowler in his cabin. The captain would hardly put the entire passenger list through a psycho-reading merely to apprehend a prowler.

  Joe rubbed his face, yawned. Out in space once more, on the last leg of his trip. Unless, of course, Harry had moved on again.

  He raised the stop-ray shield in front of the port, looked out into space. Ahead, in the direction of flight, a buffer-screen absorbed what radiation the ship either overtook or met. Otherwise the energy, increased in frequency and hardness by the Doppler action due to the ship's velocity, would have crisped him instantly.

  Light impinging from a beam showed him stars more or less with their normal magnitudes, the perspectives shifting and roiling as he watched—and the stars floating, eddying, drifting like motes in a beam of light. To the stern was utter darkness—no light could overtake the vessel. Joe dropped the shutter. The scene was familiar enough to him. Now for a bath, his clothes, food…

  Looking at his face in the mirror he noticed a stubble of beard. The shaver lay on a glass shelf over the collapsible sink. Joe reached—yanked his hand to a halt, an inch from the shaver. When first he had entered the cabin it had hung from a clasp on the bulkhead.

  Joe eased himself away from the wall, his nerves tingling. Certainly his visitor had not been shaving? He looked down to the deck—saw a mat of coiled woven brass. Bending, he noticed a length of copper wire joining the mat to the drain pipe.

  Gingerly he scooped the shaver into his shoe, carried it to his bunk. A metal band circled the handle with a tit entering the case near the unit which scooped power from the ship's general field.

  In the long run, thought Joe, he had Hableyat to thank—Hableyat who had so kindly rescued him from the Thearch and put him aboard the Bekaurion with a potted plant.

  Joe rang for the steward. A young woman came, white-haired like the other members of the crew. She wore a parti-colored short-skirted garment of orange and blue that fitted her like a coat of paint. Joe dumped the shaver into a pillowcase. He said, "Take this to the electrician. It's very dangerous—got a short in it. Don't touch it. Don't let anyone touch it. And—will you please bring me another shaver?"

  "Yes, sir." She departed.

  Finally bathed, shaved and as well-dressed as his limited wardrobe permitted, he sauntered out into the saloon, stepping high in the ship's half-gravity. Four or five men and women sat along the lounges to the side, engaging in guarded conversation.

  Joe stood watching a moment. Peculiar, artificial creatures, he thought, these human beings of the Space Age—brittle and so completely formal that conversation was no more than an exchange of polished mannerisms. So sophisticated that nothing could shock them as much as naive honesty.

  Three Mangs sat in the group—two men, one old, the other young, both wearing the rich uniforms of the Mangtse Red-Branch. A young Mang woman with a certain heavy beauty, evidently the wife of the young officer. The other couple, like the race which operated the ship, were human deviants unfamiliar to Joe. They were like pictures he had seen in a childhood fairybook— wispy fragile creatures, big-eyed, thin-skinned, dressed in loose sheer gowns.

  Joe descended the stairs to the main deck and a ship's officer, the head steward presumably, appeared. Gesturing politely to Joe he spoke to the entire group. "I present Lord Joe Smith of the planet"—he hesitated—"the planet Earth."

  He turned to the others in the group. "Erru Kametin"—this was the older of the two Mang officers—"Erru Ex Amma and Erritu Thi Amma, of Mangtse." He turned to the fairy-like creatures. "Prater Luli Hassimassa and his lady Hermina of Cil."

  Joe bowed politely, seated himself at the end of the lounge. The young Mang officer, Erru Ex Amma, asked curiously, "Did I understand that you claim Earth for your home planet?"

  "Yes," said Joe half-truculently. "I was born on the continent known as North America, where the first ship ever to leave Earth was built."

  "Strange," muttered the Mang, eyeing Joe with an expression just short of disbelief. "I've always considered talk of Earth one of the superstitions of space, like the Moons of Paradise and the Star Dragon."

  "I can assure you that Earth is no legend," said Joe. "Somehow in the outward migrations, among the wars and the planetary programs of propaganda, the real existence of Earth has been called to question. And we travel very rarely into this outer swirl of the galaxy."

  The fairy-woman spoke in a piping voice which suited her moth-frail appearance. "And you maintain that all of us—you, the Mangs, we Cils, the Belands who operate the ship, the Druids, the Frumsans, the Thablites —they are all ultimately derived from Earth stock?"

  "Such is the fact."

  A metallic voice said, "That is not entirely true. The Druids were the first fruit of the Tree of Life. That is the well-established doctrine, and any other allegation is false."

  Joe said in a careful voice, "You are entitled to your belief."

  The steward came forward. "Ecclesiarch Manaolo Ma Benlodieth of Kyril."

  There was a moment of silence after the introductions. Then Manaolo said, "Not only am I entitled to my belief, but I must protest the propagation of incorrect statements."

  "That also is your privilege," said Joe. "Protest all you like."

  He met Manaolo's dead black eyes and there seemed no human understanding behind them, no thought —only emotion and obstinate will.

  There was movement behind; it was Priestess Elfane. She was presented to the company and without words she settled beside Hermina of Gil. The atmosphere now had changed and even though she but murmured pleasantries with Hermina her presence brought a piquancy, a sparkle, a spice…

  Joe counted. Eight with himself —fourteen cabins—six passengers yet unaccounted for. One of the thirteen had tried to kill him—a Mang.

  A pair of Druids issued from cabins two and three, and were introduced —elderly sheep-faced men en route to a mission on Ballenkarch. They carried with them a portable altar, which they immediately set up in a corner of the saloon, and began a series of silent rites before a small representation of the Tree. Manaolo watched them without interest a moment or two, then turned away.

  Four, unaccounted for, thought J
oe.

  The steward announced the first meal of the day, and at this moment another couple appeared from their cabins, two Mangs in non-military attire—loose wrappings of colored silk, light cloaks, jeweled corselets. They bowed formally to the company and, since the steward was arranging the collapsible table, they took their places without introduction. Five Mangs, thought Joe. Two soldiers, two civilians, a woman. Two cabins still concealed their occupants.

  Cabin No. 10 opened, and an aged woman of extreme height stepped slowly out on the balcony. She was bald as an egg and her head was flat on top. She had a great bony nose, black bulging eyes. She wore a black cape and on each finger of both hands was a tremendous jewel.

  One more to go. The door to cabin No. 6 remained closed.

  The meal was served from a menu surprisingly varied, to serve the palates of many races. Joe, in his planet-to-planet journey across the galaxy, perforce had dismissed all queasiness. He had eaten organic matter of every conceivable color, consistency, odor and flavor.

  Familiar items he could put a name to—ferns, fruits, fungus, roots, reptiles, insects, fish, mollusks, slugs, eggs, spore-sacs, animals and birds—and at least as many objects he could neither define nor recognize and whose sole claim to his appetite lay in the example of others.

  His place at the table was directly opposite Manaolo and Elfane. He noticed that they did not speak and several times he felt her eyes on him, puzzled, appraising, half-furtive. She's sure she's seen me, thought Joe, but she cant remember where.

  After the meal the passengers separated. Manaolo retired to the gymnasium behind the saloon. The five Mangs sat down to a game played with small rods of different colors. The Cils went up to the promenade along the back rib of the ship. The tall demon-woman sat in a chair, gazing blankly into nothingness.

  Joe would likewise have taken exercise in the gymnasium but the presence of Manaolo deterred him. He selected a film from the ship's library, prepared to return to his room.