Nopalgarth

by Jack Vance

Pttdu Apiptix watched him a moment. “You wonder if the cure is not worse than the disease,” came his words.

  “Such a thought occurred to me.”

  “In a month the nopal will once more settle upon you. Will you allow it to remain?”

  Burke remembered the purging process—anything but a pleasant experience. Suppose he did not purge himself when the nopal returned? Once secure upon his neck the nopal would be invisible—but Burke would know it to be there, the proud bush of spines spread like a peacock’s tail, the orbs peering owlishly over his shoulders. Fibrils, penetrating his brain, would influence his emotions, derive nourishment from heaven knew what intimate source… . Burke drew a deep breath. “No, I won’t allow it to remain.”

  “No more will we.”

  “But to purge Earth of the nopal—” Burke hesitated, dazed by the scope of the problem. He shook his head in frustration. “I don’t see what can be done… . Many different kinds of people live on Earth: different nationalities, religions, races—billions of people who know nothing of the nopal, who don’t want to know, who wouldn’t believe me if I told them!”

  “I understand this very well,” Pttdu Apiptix replied. “The same situation existed on Ixax a hundred years ago. Only a million of us now survive, but we would fight the war again—or another war, if need be. If the Earth people do not cleanse their corruption, then we must do so.”

  The silence was heavy. When Burke spoke his voice rang dull, like a bell heard under water. “You threaten us with war.”

  “I threaten a war against the nopal.”

  “If the nopal are driven from Earth they will merely collect on another world.”

  “Then we will pursue them, until finally they are gone.”

  Burke shook his head fretfully. Somehow, in a manner he could not quite identify, the Xaxan’s attitude seemed fanatic and irrational. But there was an enormous amount he failed to understand. Were the Xaxans imparting everything they knew? He said rather desperately, “I can’t make so big a commitment; I’ve got to have more information!”

  Pttdu Apiptix asked, “What do you wish to know?”

  “A great deal more than you’ve told me. What are the nopal? What kind of stuff are they made of?”

  “These matters are extraneous to the issue. Nevertheless I will try to satisfy you. The nopal are a life-form somehow related to conceptualizing—we know no more.”

  “ ‘Conceptualizing’?” Burke was puzzled. “Thought?”

  The Xaxan hesitated, as if he too might be confused by the difficulties of semantic exactness. “ ‘Thought’ means something different to us than to you. However, let us use the word ‘thought’ in your sense. The nopal travel through space faster than light, as fast as thought. Since we do not know the nature of thought, we are ignorant as to the nature of the nopal.”

  The other Xaxans observed Burke with stolid dispassion, standing like a row of antique stone statues.

  “Do they reason? Are they intelligent?”

  “ ‘Intelligent’?” Apiptix made a curt clicking sound which the voice-box failed to translate. “You use the word to mean the kind of thinking that you and your fellow men perform. ‘Intelligence’ is an Earth-human concept. The nopal do not think as you think. If you gave a nopal one of your so-called ‘intelligence tests’ its score would be very low, and you would view it with amusement. Nevertheless it is able to manipulate your brain much more easily than it can manipulate ours. The style of your thinking and the nature of your visual processes is quicker and more flexible than ours, and more susceptible to nopal suggestion. The nopal find fertile pasture among the brains of Earth. As to the intelligence of the nopal, it functions to augment the success of its existence. It realizes your capacity for horror and hides from view. It knows the Tauptu for its enemies and encourages hate in the Chitumih. It is crafty and fights for its life. It is not without initiative and resource. In the most general sense, it is intelligent.”

  Annoyed by what he interpreted as condescension, Burke said shortly, “Your ideas regarding ‘intelligence’ may or may not be logical; your ideas regarding the nopal seem cumbersome, and your purging methods absolutely primitive. Is it necessary to use torture?”

  “We know no other way. Our energies have been engaged in warfare; we have had no time for research.”

  “Well—the system won’t work on Earth.”

  “You must make it work!”

  Burke laughed hollowly. “The first time I tried it I’d be thrown into jail.”

  “Then you must build an organization to prevent this, or to provide you with concealment.”

  Burke shook his head slowly. “You make it sound so simple. But I’m only one man; I wouldn’t know where to start.”

  Apiptix shrugged, an almost Earth-type gesture. “You are one man, you must become two. The two must become four; the four, eight, and so on until all Earth is purged. This was the process we followed on Ixax. It has cleared Ixax of Chitumih, and so it is successful. Our population will restore itself, we will rebuild our cities. The war is no more than an instant in the history of our planet; so shall it be on Earth.”

  Burke was unconvinced. “If Earth is infested with nopal, it should be decontaminated—no argument there. But I don’t want to start a panic, not even a general disturbance, let alone a war.”

  “No more did Maub Kiamkagx,” intoned the voice-box of Pttdu Apiptix. “The war began only when the Chitumih discovered the Tauptu. The nopal urged them to hatred; they fought to annihilate the Tauptu. The Tauptu resisted, captured and purged Chitumih. There was war. Events may go the same way on Earth.”

  “I hope not,” said Burke curtly.

  “So long as the nopal of Nopalgarth are destroyed, and quickly, we will not be critical of your methods.”

  There was another period of silence. The Xaxans sat frozen. Burke rested his forehead wearily in his hands. Confound the nopal, confound the Xaxans, confound the entire complicated mess! But he was in it and there seemed no way to get out. And even though he could not find the Xaxans a likeable folk he was forced to admit the justice of their complaint. So: where was his choice? He had none. “I will do my best,” he said.

  Apiptix showed neither satisfaction nor surprise. He rose to his feet. “I will teach you what we know of the nopal. Come.”

  They returned through a damp corridor to the hall which Burke had labeled the ‘denopalization chamber.’ The machinery was in use. With a crawling stomach Burke watched as a female, struggling and gasping, was fixed to the grill. Burke’s eyes—or was it another sense?—now saw the nopal clearly. It flinched in the glare of greenish light, spines swollen and askew, eye-bulbs pulsing, fuzzy thorax working helplessly.

  Burke turned to Apiptix in disgust. “Can’t you use an anaesthetic? Is it necessary to be so harsh?”

  “You misunderstand the process,” the Xaxan replied, and somehow the voice-box managed to convey an undertone of grim contempt. “The nopal is not troubled by the energy; it is weakened and dislodged by the turmoil of the brain— by the Chitumih’s certainty of pain. The Chitumih are housed beside the chamber where they can hear the cries of their fellows. It is unpleasant —but it weakens the nopal. Perhaps in time you will find more effective techniques on Earth.”

  Burke muttered, “I hope so. I can’t stand too much of this torture.”

  “You may be obliged to do so.” The voice-box spoke with its usual tonelessness.

  Burke tried to turn his back on the denopalization grid, but could not restrain fascinated glances. There was frantic rattling and palpitation of the female’s thorax. The nopal clung desperately to the woman’s scalp; finally it was wrenched loose and carried off in the loose near-transparent sack.

  “What happens now?” Burke asked.

  “The nopal finally becomes useful. Possibly you have wondered about the sack, you have asked yourself how it contains the impalpable nopal?”

  Burke acknowledged as much.

  “The substance of the sack
is dead nopal. We know no more about it than that, for it does not respond to investigation. Heat, chemicals, electricity —nothing of our physical world affects it. The stuff exhibits neither mass nor inertia; it coheres to nothing but itself. However the nopal cannot penetrate a film of the dead nopal-stuff. When we dislodge a nopal from a Chitumih, we capture it and crush it thin. This is very easy, for the nopal crumbles at a touch— when the touch is transmitted through the nopal-stuff.” He looked at the denopalizing machine and a wisp of nopal-cloth came floating over to him.

  “How did you do that?” asked Burke.

  “Telekinesis.”

  Burke felt no particular surprise; in the context of what he had learned the procedure seemed quite natural, quite ordinary. He thoughtfully examined the nopal-stuff. It seemed vaguely fibrous, like a cloth woven of spider-web. There were certain implications to the fact of this material, its easy response to telekinesis … Apiptix spoke, breaking into his train of thought.

  “Nopal-cloth is the lens-material of the spectacles through which you looked yesterday. We do not know why Chitumih can sometimes sense a nopal when light is filtered through a film of the nopal’s dead brother. We have speculated, but the laws which govern nopal-matter are not those of our own space. Perhaps this will be the spearhead of your attack on the nopal of Nopalgarth: the discovery and systematization of a new science. You have facilities and thousands of trained minds on Earth. On Ixax are only tired warriors.”

  Burke thought wistfully of his old life, of the secure niche he could never reoccupy. He thought of his friends, of Dr. Ralph Tarbert, of Margaret—vital, cheerful Margaret Haven. He saw their faces and imagined their nopal, riding like pompous Old Men of the Sea. The picture was ludicrous and tragic. He could well understand the fanatic harshness of the Tauptu; under the same circumstances, he reflected, he might become equally intense. ‘Under the same circumstances’? The circumstances were the same.

  The flat voice of the translation-box interrupted his thoughts. “Look.”

  Burke saw a Chitumih struggling ferociously as the Tauptu took him to the denopalizing grill. The nopal towered over his head and neck like some fantastic war helmet.

  “You are witness to a great occasion,” said Apiptix. “This is the last of the Chitumih. There are no more. Ixax is now purged.”

  Burke heaved a deep sigh, and with it undertook responsibility for the task the Xaxans had thrust upon him. “In time Earth will be the same. … In time, in time …”

  The Tauptu clamped the last Chitumih to the grill; the blue flame chattered; the Chitumih rattled like a great threshing-machine. Burke turned away sick to his stomach, sick at heart. “We can’t do this!” he said hoarsely. “There must be some easy way to denopalize; we can’t torture—we can’t make war!”

  “There is no easy way,” declared the voice-box. “There shall be no delay; we are determined!”

  Burke glared at him in anger and surprise. A few minutes previously Apiptix himself had suggested the possibility of a research program on Earth; now he balked at the idea of delay. A curious inconsistency!

  “Come,” said Apiptix abruptly. “You shall see what becomes of the nopal.”

  They entered a long rather dim room, ranked with benches. A hundred Xaxans worked with steady intensity, assembling mechanisms Burke could not identify. If they felt curiosity concerning Burke, he was unable to detect it.

  Apiptix told Burke. “Seize the bag.”

  Burke obeyed gingerly. The bag felt crisp and frail; the nopal within crushed at his touch. “It feels brittle,” he said, “like dry old eggshell.”

  “Peculiar,” said Apiptix. “But do you not deceive yourself? How can you feel something which is impalpable?” Burke looked startled at Apiptix, then at the bag. How was it possible, indeed? He no longer felt the bag. It sifted through his fingers like a wisp of smoke. “I can’t feel it,” he said in a voice husky with astonishment.

  “Certainly you can,” said Apiptix. “It is there, you can sense it and you already felt it.”

  Burke reached out again. The bag at first seemed less tangible than before —but definitely it was there. As he gained certainty the tactile sensation increased in strength.

  “Do I imagine it?” he asked. “Or is it real?”

  “It is something you feel with your mind, not your hands.”

  Burke experimented with the bag. “I move it with my hands. I push it. I can feel the nopal crush between my fingers.”

  Apiptix regarded him quizzically. “Is not sensation the reaction of your brain to the arrival of neural currents? This, as I understand it, is the operation of Earth-style brains.”

  “I know the difference between a sensation in my hand and one in my brain,” said Burke dryly.

  “Do you?”

  Burke started to reply, then halted.

  Apiptix continued. “It is a misconception. You feel the bag with your mind, not your hands, even if the gestures of feeling accompany the act. You reach out, you receive a tactile impression. When you do not reach, you feel nothing— because normally you expect no sensation unless the act of reaching and touching is involved.”

  “In that case,” Burke said, “I should be able to feel the nopal-cloth without use of my hands.”

  “You should be able to feel anything without use of your hands.”

  Teletactility, thought Burke: touch without use of the nerve-endings. Was not clairvoyance seeing without use of the eyes? He turned back to the bag. The nopal glared wildly from within. He conceived himself handling the sack, squeezing it. A quiver of sensation reached his mind, no more—a mere hint of crispness and lightness.

  “Try to move the bag from one spot to another.”

  Burke exerted his mind against the bag; bag and nopal shifted easily.

  “This is fantastic,” he muttered. “I must have telekinetic ability!”

  “It is easy with this material,” said Apiptix. “The nopal is thought, the bag is thought; what can be more easily moved by the mind than thought?”

  Considering the question sheerly rhetorical, Burke made no response. He watched the operators seize the bag, thrust it down on the bench, crush it flat. The nopal, disintegrated into powder, merged with the fabric of the bag.

  “There is no more to be seen here,” said Apiptix. “Come.”

  They returned to the refectory. Burke slumped gloomily upon the bench in reaction to his previous mood of zeal and determination.

  “You seem dubious,” Apiptix said presently. “Do you have questions?”

  Burke considered. “A moment ago you mentioned something about the operation of the Earth-brain. Does the Xaxan-brain work differently?”

  “Yes. Your brain is simpler and its parts are versatile. Our brains work by much more complicated means, sometimes to our advantage, sometimes not. Your brain allows you the image-forming capacity which you call ‘imagination’; we lack this. We lack your ability to combine incommensurable and irrational quantities and arrive at a new truth. Much of your mathematics, much of your thought, is incomprehensible to us—confusing, frightening, insane. But we have compensatory mechanisms in our brains: built-in calculators which instantly perform the computations you consider elaborate and toilsome. Instead of imagining—‘imaging’ —an object, we construct an actual model of the object in a special cranial sac. Certain of us can create very complicated models. This capacity is slower and more cumbersome than your imagination, but equally useful. We think, we conceive, we observe the universe in these terms: the model which forms in our mind and which we can feel with our internal fingers.”

  Burke reflected a moment. “When you equate the nopal to thought—do you mean Earth-thought or Xaxan-thought?”

  Pttdu Apiptix hesitated. “The definition is too general. I used it in a broad sense. What is thought? We do not know. The nopal are invisible and impalpable, and when denied their own freedom of motion can easily be manipulated telekinetically. They feed on mental energy. Are they actually the s
tuff of thought? We do not know.”

  “Why do you not merely pull the nopal away from the brain? Why is the torture necessary?”

  “We have tried to do this,” said Apiptix. “We dislike pain as much as you. It is impossible. The nopal, in a final malignant fit, kills the Chitumih. On the denopalization grid we cause it so much pain that it withdraws its taproots, and so may be jerked loose. Is this clear? What else do you wish to know?”

  “I’d like to know how to denopalize Earth without stirring up a hornet’s nest.”

  “There is no easy way. I will give you plans and diagrams for the denopalizing machine; you must build one or more, and start purging your people. Why do you shake your head?”

  “It’s a vast project. I still feel that there must be some easier way.”

  “There is no easy way.”

  Burke hesitated, then said, “The nopal are loathsome and parasitical, that’s agreed. Otherwise, what harm do they do?”

  Pttdu Apiptix sat like a man of iron, cabochon eyes fixed on Burke—forming an inter-cranial model of his face and head, Burke now knew.

  “They may prevent us from developing our psionic abilities,” Burke went on. “This, of course, I know nothing about, but it seems—”

  “Forget your misgivings,” said the Xaxan’s voice-box with a menacing deliberation. “There is one great fact: we are Tauptu, we will not become Chitumih again. We do not wish to submit to torture once a month. We want your cooperation in our war against the nopal, but we do not need it. We can and will destroy the nopal of Nopalgarth unless you destroy them yourself.”

  Once again Burke thought that it would be hard to feel friendship toward a Xaxan.

  “Do you have any other questions?”

  Burke considered. “I may not be able to read the plans for the denopalizing machine.”

  “They have been adapted to your system of units and use many of your standard components. You will find no difficulty.”

  “I’ll need money.”

  “There will be no lack. We will supply you with gold, as much as you need. You must arrange to sell it. What else do you wish to know?”