Nopalgarth

by Jack Vance

  He stood rigid as feeler-planes brushed down his body. In a glass dome a three-dimensional simulacrum of himself six inches high took form. Farr inspected it sourly.

  "Thank you," said the operative. "Clothes and whatever personal effects you may need will be issued in the next room."

  Farr dressed in visitor's uniform: white soft trousers, a gray and green striped smock, a loose dark-green velvet beret that fell low over his ear. "Now may I go?"

  The attendant looked into a slot beside him. Farr could see a flicker of bright characters. "You are Farr Sainh the research botanist." It was as if he had said, "You are Farr, the admitted criminal."

  "I'm Farr."

  "There are several formalities awaiting you."

  The formalities required three hours. Farr was once more given to the Szecr, who examined him carefully.

  He was finally allowed his freedom. A young man in the yellow and green stripes of the Szecr escorted him to a gondola floating in the lagoon, a long slender craft grown from a single pod. Farr gingerly took a seat and was sculled across to the city of Jhespiano.

  It was his first experience in an Iszic city, and it was far richer than his mental picture. The houses grew at irregular intervals along the avenues and canals —heavy gnarled trunks, supporting first the lower pods, then masses of broad leaves, half-submerging the upper pod-banks. Something stirred in Farr's memory—an association… Yeasts or mycetozoa under the microscope. Lamproderma violaceum? Dictydium cancellatum? There was the same proliferation of branches. The pods might have been magnified sporangia. There was the same arched well-engineered symmetry, the peculiar complex colors: dark blue overlaid with glistening gray down, burnt orange with a scarlet luster, scarlet with a purple over-glow, sooty green, white highlighted with pink, subtle browns and near-blacks. The avenues below drifted with the Iszic population, a quiet pale people, secure in the stratifications of their guilds and castes.

  The gondola glided to the landing. A Szecr in a yellow beret with green tassels was waiting—apparently a man of importance. There was no formal introduction; the Szecr discussed Farr quietly between themselves.

  Farr saw no reason to wait, and started up the avenue toward one of the new cosmopolitan hotels. The Szecr made no attempt to stop him; Farr was now on his own, subject only to surveillance.

  He relaxed and loafed around the city for almost a week. There were few other off-world visitors; the Iszic authorities discouraged tourism to the maximum degree allowed them by the Treaty of Access. Farr tried to arrange an interview with the Chairman of the Export Council, but an under-clerk turned him away politely but brusquely, upon learning that Farr wished to discuss the export of low-quality houses. Farr had expected no better. He explored the canals and the lagoon in gondolas, and he strolled the avenues. At least three of the Szecr gave him their time, quietly following along the avenues and lounging in nearby pods on the public terraces.

  On one occasion he walked around the lagoon to the far side of the island, a rocky sandy area exposed to the wind and the full force of the sun. Here the humbler castes lived in modest three-pod houses, growing in rows with strips of hot sand between the dwellings. These houses were neutral in color, a brownish gray-green with a central tuft of large leaves casting black shade over the pods. Such houses were not available for export and Farr, a man with a highly developed social conscience, became indignant. A shame these houses could not be made available to the under-housed billions of Earth! A whole district of such habitations could be provided for next to nothing: the mere cost of seed! Farr walked up to one of the houses, peered into a low-hanging pod. Instantly a branch dropped down, and had Farr not jumped back he might have been injured. As it was, the heavy terminal frond slapped across his scalp. One of the Szecr, standing twenty yards distant, sauntered forward. "You are not advised to molest the trees."

  "I wasn't molesting anything or anyone."

  The Szecr shrugged. "The tree thought otherwise. It is trained to be suspicious of strangers. Among the lower castes…" the Szecr spat contemptuously, "feuds and quarrels go on, and the trees become uneasy at the presence of a stranger."

  Farr turned to examine the tree with new interest. "Do you mean that the trees have a conscious mind?"

  The Szecr's answer was no more than an indifferent shrug.

  Farr asked, "Why aren't these trees exported? There would be an enormous market; many people need houses who can afford nothing better than these."

  "You have answered yourself," responded the Szecr. "Who is the dealer on Earth?"

  "K. Penche."

  "He is a wealthy man?"

  "Exceedingly wealthy."

  "Would he be equally wealthy selling hovels such as these?"

  "Conceivably."

  The Szecr turned away. "In any case, we would not profit. These houses are no less difficult to root, nurture, pack and ship than the Class AA houses we choose to deal in… I advise you not to investigate another strange house so closely. You might well suffer serious injury. The houses are not so tolerant of intruders as their inhabitants."

  Farr continued around the island, past orchards bearing fruit and low coarse shrubs like Earth century plants, from the center of which sprouted a cluster of ebony rods as much as an inch in diameter and ten feet tall: smooth, glossy, geometrically straight. When Farr went to investigate the Szecr interfered.

  "These are not house trees," Farr protested. "In any event, I plan no damage. I am a botanist and interested in strange plants."

  "No matter," said the Szecr lieutenant. "Neither the plants nor the craft which has developed them are your property, and hence should be of complete disinterest to you."

  "The Iszics seem to have small understanding of intellectual curiosity," observed Farr.

  "To compensate, we have a large understanding of rapacity, larceny, brain-picking and exploitation."

  Farr had no answer and, grinning wryly, continued around the beach and so back to the rich-colored fronds, pods and trunks of the town.

  One phase of the surveillance puzzled Farr. He approached the lieutenant and indicated an operative a few yards away. "Why does he mimic me? I sit down, he sits down. I drink, he drinks. I scratch my nose, he scratches his nose."

  "A special technique," explained the Szecr. "We divine the pattern of your thinking."

  "It won't work," said Farr.

  The lieutenant bowed. "Farr Sainh may be quite correct."

  Farr smiled indulgently. "Do you seriously think you can predict my plans?"

  "We can only do our best."

  "This afternoon I plan to rent a sea-going boat. Were you aware of that?"

  The lieutenant produced a paper. "I have the charter ready for you. It is the Lhaiz, and I have arranged a crew."

  II

  THE Lhaiz was a two-masted barque the shape of a Dutch wooden shoe, with purple sails and a commodious cabin. It had been grown on a special boat-tree, one piece even to the main-mast, which originally had been the stem of the pod. The foremast, sprit, booms and rigging were fabricated parts, a situation as irking to the Iszic mind as mechanical motion to an Earth electronics engineer. The crew of the Lhaiz sailed west. Atolls rose over the horizon, then sank astern. Some were deserted little gardens; others were given to the breeding, seeding, budding, grafting, sorting, packing and shipping of houses.

  As a botanist, Farr was most strongly interested in the plantations, but here the surveillance intensified, becoming a review of his every motion.

  At Tjiere atoll irritation and perversity led Farr to evade his guards. The Lhaiz sailed up to the pier and two of the crew passed lines ashore while the others furled sail and cradled booms. Aile Farr jumped easily from the after-deck down to the pier and set off toward the shore. A mutter of complaints came from behind; these gave Farr malicious amusement.

  He looked ahead to the island. The beach spread wide to either side, pounded by surf, and the slopes of the basalt ridge were swathed in green, blue and black vegetation—a
scene of great peace and beauty. Farr controlled the urge to jump down on the beach to disappear under the leaves. The Szecr were polite, but very quick on the trigger.

  A tall strong man appeared upon the dock ahead. Blue bands circled his body and limbs at six inch intervals, the pallid Iszic skin showing between the rings. Farr slackened his pace. Freedom was at an end.

  The Iszic lifted a single-lensed lorgnette on an ebony rod, the viewer habitually carried by high-caste Iszic, an accessory almost as personal as one of their organs. Farr had been viewed many times; it never failed to irritate him. Like any other visitor to Iszm, like the Iszic themselves, he had no choice, no recourse, no defense. The radiant injected into his shoulder had labeled him. He was now categorized and defined for anyone who cared to look.

  "Your pleasure, Farr Sainh?" The Iszic used the dialect which children spoke before they learned the language of their caste.

  Farr resignedly made the formal reply. "I await your will."

  "The dock-master was sent to extend proper courtesy. You perhaps became impatient?"

  "My arrival is a small matter, please don't trouble yourself."

  The Iszic flourished his viewer. "A privilege to greet a fellow-scientist."

  Farr said sourly, "That thing even tells you my occupation?"

  The Iszic viewed Fair's right shoulder. "I see you have no criminal record; your intelligence index is 23; your persistence level is Class 4… There is other information."

  "Who am I privileged to address?" asked Farr.

  "I call myself Zhde Patasz. I am fortunate enough to cultivate on Tjiere atoll."

  Farr reappraised the blue-striped man. "A planter?"

  Zhde Patasz twirled his viewer. "We will have much to discuss… I hope you will be my guest."

  The dock-master came puffing up. Zhde Patasz flourished his viewer and drifted away.

  "Farr Sainh," said the dock-master, "your modesty leads you to evade your entitled escort. It saddens us deeply."

  "You exaggerate."

  "Hardly possible. This way, Sainh."

  He marched down the concrete incline into a wide trench, with Farr sauntering behind so leisurely that the dock-master was forced to halt and wait at hundred-foot intervals. The trench led under the basalt ridge, then became a subterranean passage. Four times the dock-master slid aside plate-glass panels, four times the doors swung shut behind. Farr realized that search-screens, probes, detectors, analyzers were feeling him, testing his radiations, his mass and metallic content. He strolled along indifferently. They would find nothing. All his clothing and personal effects had been impounded; he was still wearing the visitor's uniform, trousers of white floss, a jacket striped gray and green, and the loose dark green velvet beret.

  The dock-master rapped at a door of corrugated metal. It parted in the middle into two interlocking halves, like a medieval portcullis. The passage opened into a bright room. Behind a counter sat a Szecr in the usual yellow and green stripes.

  "If the Sainh pleases—his tri-type for our records."

  Farr patiently stood on the disk of gray metal.

  "Palms forward, eyes wide."

  Farr stood quietly. Feeler-planes brushed down his body.

  "Thank you, Sainh." Farr stepped up to the counter. "That's a different type than the one at Jhespiano. Let's see it."

  The clerk showed him a transparent card with a manlike brownish splotch on its middle. "Not much of a likeness," said Farr.

  The Szecr dropped the card into a slot. On the counter-top appeared a three-dimensional replica of Farr. It could be expanded a hundred times, revealing fingerprints, cheek-pores, ear and retinal configuration.

  "I'd like to have this as a souvenir," said Farr. "It's dressed. The one at Jhespiano showed my charms to the world."

  The Iszic shrugged. "Take it."

  Farr put the replica in his pouch.

  "Now, Farr Sainh, may I ask an impertinent question?"

  "One more won't hurt me."

  Farr knew there was a cephaloscope focused on his brain. Any pulse of excitement, any flush of fear would be recorded on a chart. He brought the image of a hot bath to the brink of his mind.

  "Do you plan to steal houses, Farr Sainh?"

  Now: the placid cool porcelain, the feel of warm air and water, the scent of soap.

  "No."

  "Are you aware of, or party to, any such plan?"

  Warm water, lie back, relax.

  "No."

  The Szecr sucked in his lips, a grimace of polite skepticism. "Are you aware of the penalties visited upon thieves?"

  "Oh yes," said Farr. "They go to the Mad House."

  "Thank you, Farr Sainh, you may proceed."

  III

  THE DOCK-MASTER relinquished Farr to a pair of under-Szecr in pale yellow and gold bands.

  "This way, if you please."

  Climbing a ramp, they stepped out into an arcade with a glassed-in wall.

  Farr stopped to survey the plantation; his guides made uneasy motions, anxious to proceed.

  "If Farr Sainh desires—"

  "Just a minute," said Farr irritably. "There's no hurry."

  On his right hand was the town, a forest of intricate shapes and colors. To the back grew the modest three-pod houses of the laborers. They could hardly be seen through the magnificent array along the lagoon—houses of the planters, the Szecr, the house-breeders and housebreakers. Each was different, trained and shaped by secrets the Iszic withheld even from each other.

  They were beautiful, thought Farr, but in a weird indecisive way they puzzled him, just as sometimes the palate falters on a new flavor. He decided that environment influenced his judgment. Iszic houses on Earth looked habitable enough. This was Iszm and any attribute of a strange planet shared the basic strangeness.

  He turned his attention to the fields. They spread off to his left, various shades of brown, gray, gray-green, green, according to the age and variety of the plant. Each field had its long low shed where mature seedlings were graded, labeled, potted and packed for destinations around the universe.

  The two young Szecr began to mutter in the language of their caste and Farr turned away from the window.

  "This way, Farr Sainh."

  "Where are we going?"

  "You are the guest of Zhde Patasz Sainh."

  Excellent, thought Farr. He had examined the houses exported to Earth, the Class AA houses sold by K. Penche. They would compare poorly with the houses the planters grew for themselves.

  He became aware of the two young Szecr. They were standing like statues, staring at the floor of the arcade.

  "What's the matter?" asked Farr.

  They began to breathe heavily. Farr looked at the floor. A vibration, a low roar. Earthquake! thought Farr. The sound grew louder, the windows rumbled in resonance. Farr felt a sudden wildness, a sense of emergency. He looked out the window. In a nearby field the ground broke up, took on a crazy hump, and erupted. Tender seedlings crushed under tons of dirt. A metal snout protruded, grinding up ten feet, twenty feet. A door clanged open. Squat heavy-muscled brown men leaped out, ran into the fields, and began to uproot young plants. In the door a man, grinning in the extremity of tension, roared out incomprehensible orders.

  Farr watched in fascination; a raid of tremendous scope. Horns rang out from Tjiere town; the vicious fwipp-hiss of shatter-bolts sounded. Two of the brown men became red clots. The man in the doorway bellowed, and the others retreated to the metal snout.

  The port clanged shut; but one raider had waited too long. He beat his fists on the hull, but to no avail. He was ignored. Frantically he pounded and the seedlings he had gathered crushed in his grip.

  The snout vibrated, then lifted higher from the ground. The shatter-bolts from the Tjiere fort began to chip off flakes of metal. A bull's eye port in the hull snapped open; a weapon spat blue flame. In Tjiere a great tree shattered and sagged. Farr's head swam to a tremendous soundless scream. The young Szecr dropped gasping to their knees.<
br />
  The tree toppled. The great pods, the leaf-terraces, the tendrils, the careful balconies—they whistled through the air and crashed in pitiful tangle. Iszic bodies hurled from the ruins, kicking and twisting.

  The metal snout ground up another ten feet. In a moment it would shake loose the soil, then blast up and out into space. The brown man left outside fought for footing on the heaving soil, still pounding on the hull, but now without hope.

  Fair looked at the sky. Three monitors were slipping down from the upper air—ugly, awkward craft, looking like metal scorpions.

  A shatter-bolt smashed a crater in the soil beside the hull. The brown man was flung a looping sixty feet. He turned three cartwheels and landed on his back.

  The metal hull began to churn back down into the soil, settling slowly at first, then faster and faster. Another shatter-bolt rang on the prow like a great hammer. The metal shriveled and fragmented into ribbons. The hull was under the surface; clods of soil caved in on top.

  Another shatter-bolt threw up a gout of dust.

  The two young Szecr had risen to their feet. They stared out across the devastated field, crying out in a tongue meaningless to Farr. One grasped Farr's arm.

  "Come, we must secure you. Danger, danger!"

  Farr shook them off. "I'll wait here."

  "Farr Sainh, Farr Sainh," they cried. "Our orders are to see to your safety."

  "I'm safe here," said Farr. "I want to watch."

  The three monitors hung over the crater, drifting back and forth.

  "Looks like the raiders got away," said Farr.

  "No! Impossible," cried the Szecr. "It's the end of Iszm!"

  Down from the sky dropped a slender ship, smaller than the monitors. If the monitors were scorpions, the new vessel was a wasp. It settled over the crater and sank into the loose dirt—slowly, gingerly, like a probe. It began to roar, to vibrate, then it churned out of sight.

  Along the arcade came a dozen men, running with the sinuous back-leaning glide of the Iszic. On an impulse, Farr fell in behind them, ignoring the distress of the two young Szecr.