by Jack Vance
“A matter which puzzles me —perhaps it’s rather trivial ..”
“What is it that puzzles you?”
“Simply this. To dislodge the nopal you use fabric made from dead nopal. Where did the first piece of nopal-cloth come from?”
Apiptix stared fixedly from his mud-colored eyes. The voice-box muttered something incomprehensible. Apiptix rose to his feet. “Come, you now will return to Nopalgarth.”
“But you haven’t answered my question.”
“I do not know the answer.”
Burke wondered at the leaden quality to the voice from the supposedly expressionless translation-box.
VII
THEY RETURNED TO Earth in a comfortless black cylinder, battered from a hundred and fifty years of service. Pttdu Apiptix refused to discuss the means of propulsion except to speak vaguely of anti-gravity. Burke recalled the disk of anti-gravitic metal which—so long ago!—had enticed him to the house of Sam Gibbons in Buellton, Virginia. He tried to steer Pttdu Apiptix into a general discussion of anti-gravity, without success. So laconic, in fact, was the Xaxan that Burke wondered whether the subject might not be an equal mystery to both of them. He broached other topics, hoping to learn the extent of Xaxan knowledge, but Pttdu Apiptix for the most part refused to satisfy his curiosity. A secretive, taciturn, humorless race, thought Burke—then reminded himself that Ixax lay ruined after a century of ferocious war, a situation not conducive to cheery good-nature. Sadly he wondered what lay ahead for Earth.
Days passed and they approached the Solar System, a spectacle which remained invisible to Burke; there were no ports except in the control room from which he had been barred. Then, while he sat puzzling over the denopalization plans, Apiptix appeared, and with a brusque motion gave Burke to understand that the moment of disembarkation had arrived. He led Burke aft, into a tender as battered and corroded as the mother-ship. Burke was astonished to find his car clamped in the hold of the tender.
“We have monitored your television broadcasts,” Apiptix told him. “We know that your automobile, left neglected, would arouse attention adverse to our plans.”
“What of Sam Gibbons, the man you killed?” Burke asked tartly. “Do you think he won’t attract attention?”
“We removed the body. The fact of his death remains uncertain.”
Burke snorted. “He disappeared the same time I did. People in my office know that he telephoned me. I’ll have some explaining to do if anyone puts two and two together.”
“You must use your ingenuity. I advise you to avoid the company of your fellows as much as possible. You are now a Tauptu among Chitumih. They will show you no mercy.”
Burke doubted if the translation-box could convey the sarcastic edge to the comment which rose to his lips, and so restrained it.
The cylinder settled upon a quiet dirt road in the country; Burke alighted, stretched his arms. The air seemed wonderfully sweet—the air of Earth!
Dusk had not completely gone from the evening sky; the time was perhaps nine o’clock. Crickets chirped in blackberry thickets massed alongside the road; a dog bayed from a nearby farm.
Apiptix gave Burke last instructions. The toneless voice seemed muffled and conspiratorial after the echoing corridors of the vessel. “In your car are a hundred kilograms of gold. This you must convert into legal currency.” He tapped the parchment case which Burke carried. You must build the denopalizer as quickly as possible. Remember that very shortly—in a matter of a week or two—the nopal will return to your brain. You must be prepared to purge yourself. This device”—he gave Burke a small black box—“emits signals which will keep me informed of your whereabouts. If you need help or further gold, break this seal, press this button. It will put you into communication with me.” With no further ceremony he turned back to the dark vessel. It rose, departed.
Burke was alone. Familiar dear old Earth! Never had he realized how deeply he loved his home-world! Suppose he had been forced to spend the rest of his life on Ixax? His heart went cold at the thought. Yet—he screwed up his face —this Earth, by his instrumentality, must flow with blood… . Unless he could find some better way to kill the nopal… .
Along a driveway, apparently leading to a nearby homestead came the bobbing flicker of a flashlight. The farmer, aroused by his dog, had stirred himself to investigate. Burke climbed into his car, but the flashlight fixed on him.
“What’s goin’ on here?” called a gruff voice. Burke sensed rather than saw that the man carried a shotgun. “What are you doing, mister?” The voice was unfriendly. The nopal, clasped around the farmer’s head and faintly luminous, puffed and distended itself indignantly.
Burke explained that he had stopped to relieve himself. No other explanation seemed adequate to the circumstances.
The farmer made no comment, swung his light around the road, turned it back to Burke. “I advise you to get movin’. Something tells me you’re here for no good, and I’d just as soon let fly with my 12-gauge as look at you.”
Burke saw no reason to argue. He started the motor, drove away before the farmer’s nopal prompted him to carry out the threat. In the rear-view mirror he watched the flashlight’s baleful white eye diminish. Gloomily he thought, my homecoming welcome from the Chitumih … Lucky it wasn’t worse.
The dirt road became a county black-top. The tank was low on gas and at the first village, three miles down the road, Burke pulled into a service-station. A stocky young man with a sunburned face and sun-bleached blond hair emerged from under the lube rack. The spines of his nopal sparkled like a diffraction grating in the glare of the lights along the marquee; the eye-orbs peering owlishly toward Burke. Burke saw the spines give a quick jerk; the attendant stopped short, dropping his professional grin with startling suddenness. “Yes, sir,” he said gruffly.
“Fill the tank, please,” said Burke.
The attendant muttered under his breath, went to the pump. When the tank was filled he took Burke’s money with averted gaze, making no move to check the oil or clean the windshield. He brought the change, thrust it through the window mumbling, “Thank you, sir.”
Burke inquired the best route to Washington; the youth jerked a thumb: “Follow the highway,” and stalked sullenly away.
Burke chuckled sadly to himself as he turned out into the highway. A Tauptu on Nopalgarth and a snowball in hell had a lot in common, he reflected.
A big diesel truck and trailer roared past. With sudden alarm Burke wondered about the driver and the driver’s nopal, both peering ahead along the headlight-washed road. How much influence could the nopal exert? A twitch of the hand, a jerk of the steering-wheel … Burke drove hunched over the wheel, sweating at each set of oncoming headlights.
Without incident or accident he came to the outskirts of Arlington, where he lived in an unpretentious apartment. A gnawing at the stomach reminded him that he had eaten nothing for eight hours, and then only a bowl of Xaxan porridge. In front of a brightly-lit sandwich-and-malt shop he slowed and halted, looked uncertainly through the windows. A group of teenagers lounged in knotty-pine booths; two young laborers in ‘Frisco jeans sat hunched over hamburgers at the counter. Everyone seemed preoccupied with his own affairs, although all the nopal in the room shimmered nervously and peered out the window toward Burke. Burke hesitated, then in a fit of obstinacy, parked his car, entered the soda fountain, and seated himself at the end of the counter.
The proprietor came forward wiping his hands on his apron, a tall man with a face like an old tennis ball. Above the white chefs hat rose a magnificent plume of spines, four feet tall, glossy and thick. The eyes beside his head were as large as grapefruit. This was the largest and finest nopal Burke had yet seen.
Burke ordered a pair of hamburgers in a voice as neutral and unprovocative as he could manage. The proprietor half-turned away, then stopped, inspecting Burke sidewise. “What’s the trouble, buddy? You drunk? You act kinda funny.”
“No,” said Burke politely. “I haven�
�t had a drink for weeks.”
“You hopped up?”
“No,” said Burke with an edgy grin. “Just hungry.”
The proprietor turned slowly away. “I don’t need no wisecracks. I got trouble enough without smart-alecks.”
Burke held his tongue. The proprietor petulantly slapped meat down on the griddle, and stood looking over his shoulder at Burke. His nopal seemed to have swiveled around so that it too stared at Burke.
Burke turned his head to find nopal-eyes watching from the knotty-pine booths. He looked up toward the ceiling; three or four nopal drifted across his line of sight, airy as milk-weed floss. Nopal everywhere: nopal large and small; pink and pale green; nopal like shoals of fish; nopal behind nopal, down distances and perspectives that receded far beyond the walls of the room… . The outer door swung open; four husky youths swaggered in and took seats next to Burke. From their conversation Burke gathered that they had been driving around town hoping to pick up girls, but without success. Burke sat quietly, conscious of a nopal’s rolling orb nauseatingly close to his face. He shrank away a trifle; as if at a signal the young man beside him turned, stared coldly at him. “Something bothering you, chum?”
“Nothing whatever,” said Burke politely.
“Sarcastic bastard, ain’tcha?”
The proprietor loomed over them. “What’s the trouble?”
“Just this guy acting sarcastic,” said the youth, drowning out Burke’s remarks.
A foot from Burke’s head the nopal’s eyes bobbed and ogled. All the other nopal in the room watched intently. Burke felt lonely and isolated. “I’m sorry,” he said evenly. “I meant no offense.”
“Would you like to settle it outside, chum? I’d be glad to help.”
“No, thanks.”
“Kinda chicken, ain’tcha?”
“Yep.”
The youth sneered, turned his back.
Burke ate the hamburgers which the proprietor spun contemptuously down before him, paid his check, went out the door. Behind came the four youths. Burke’s adversary said, “Look, chum, I don’t wanta be insulting, but I don’t like your face.”
“I don’t like it either,” said Burke, “but I’ve got to live with it.”
“With your fast line you oughta go on TV. You got a real wit.”
Burke said nothing, but tried to walk away. The offended young man jumped in front of him. “About that face of yours —since neither of us like it—why don’t I change it a little?” He swung his fist; Burke ducked. Another of the group pushed him from behind; he stumbled and the first hit him a hard blow. He fell to the graveled driveway; the four began kicking him. “Get the son of a bitch,” they hissed, “get him good.”
The proprietor rushed out. “Cut it out! Hear me? Stop it! I don’t care what you do, only don’t do it here!” He addressed Burke, “Get up, get goin’, and don’t come back, if you know what’s good for you!”
Burke limped to his car, got in. In front of the soda fountain the five looked after him. He started the car, drove slowly to his apartment, body throbbing from his new aches and bruises. A fine homecoming, he thought with bitterly amused self-pity.
He parked his car in the street, stumbled up the stairs, opened his door, and limped wearily inside.
He stood in the center of the room looking around at the comfortably shabby furniture, the books, mementoes, general odds and ends. How dear and familiar these things were; how remote they had become. It was as if he had wandered into a room of his childhood… .
In the hall, footsteps sounded. They stopped outside his door; there was a timid tap. Burke grimaced. This would be Mrs. McReady, his landlady, who was impeccably genteel, but on occasion talkative. Tired, bruised, discouraged and disheveled, Burke was in no mood for spurious politeness.
The tap sounded again, rather more insistent. Burke could not ignore it; she knew he was home. He limped over to the door, swung it open.
In the hallway stood Mrs. McReady. She lived in one of the first floor apartments. A frail nervously energetic woman of sixty, with well-brushed white hair, a delicate face and a fresh complexion on which, so she claimed, she used nothing but Castile soap. She carried herself erectly, spoke clearly and with precision; Burke had always regarded her as a charming Edwardian survival. The nopal riding her shoulders appeared grotesquely large. Its bank of spines rose pompous and arrogant, almost as tall again as Mrs. McReady. Its thorax was a great wad of dead-black fuzz, its sucker-flap almost enveloped her head. Burke was sickened and astounded: how could so slight a woman support so monstrous a nopal?
Mrs. McReady in her turn was surprised by Burke’s battered appearance. “Mr. Burke! What on earth has happened? Did you”—her voice dwindled and the last words fell out one at a time—“have some kind of accident … ?”
Burke tried to reassure her with a smile. “Nothing serious. A mix-up with a gang of hoodlums.”
Mrs. McReady stared, and from just below her ears the great orbs of the nopal peered at Burke. Her face became rather pinched. “Have you been drinking, Mr. Burke?”
Burke protested with an uneasy laugh. “No, Mrs. McReady —I’m not drunk and disorderly.”
Mrs. McReady sniffed. “You really should have left word of some sort, Mr. Burke. Your office has called several times, and men have been here inquiring for you—policemen, I should think.”
Burke explained that matters beyond his control had made normal procedures impossible, but Mrs. McReady paid no heed. She was now quite disturbed by Burke’s carelessness and lack of consideration; she had never thought Mr. Burke such a—yes, such a boor!
“Miss Haven also has telephoned —almost every day. She’s been terribly worried by your absence. I promised to let her know as soon as you arrived.”
Burke groaned between clenched teeth. It was unthinkable that Margaret should be involved in this business! He put his hands to his head, smoothed his rumpled hair, while Mrs. McReady watched with suspicion and disapproval.
“Are you ill, Mr. Burke?” She put the inquiry not from sympathy but out of her creed of dynamic kindness, which made her the terror of anyone she found abusing an animal.
“No, Mrs. McReady, I’m quite all right. But please don’t call Miss Haven.”
Mrs. McReady refused a commitment. “Good night, Mr. Burke.” She marched stiff-backed down the steps, upset and disgusted by Mr. Burke’s behavior. She’d always thought him so pleasant and reliable! Directly to the telephone she went, and as she had promised, telephoned Margaret Haven.
Burke mixed himself a highball, drank it without pleasure. He soaked under a hot shower, gingerly shaved. Then, too tired and miserable to worry about his problems, crawled into bed and slept.
Shortly after dawn he awoke and lay listening to the morning sounds: the whir of an occasional early automobile, a distant alarm-clock abruptly cut off, the twitter of sparrows: all so normal as to make his mission seem absurd and fantastic. Still—the nopal existed. He could see them drifting on the cool morning air like enormous big-eyed mosquitoes. Fantastic though the nopal might be, they were by no means absurdities. According to Pttdu Apiptix he could count on no more than a further two weeks of grace. Then the nopal would overcome whatever resistance now existed and once again he would be chitumih … Burke shuddered, sat quickly up on the edge of his bed. He would become as cold and hard as the Xaxans; he would go to any length rather than become afflicted again; he would spare no one, not even—the doorbell rang. Burke tottered to the door, eased it open, dreading to see the face he knew would be there.
Margaret Haven faced him. Burke could not bear to look at the nopal clinging to her head. “Paul,” she said huskily, “what on earth is the matter with you? Where have you been?”
Burke took her hand, drew her into the apartment. With a leaden heart he felt the fingers become stiff and rigid. “Make some coffee,” he said in a dreary voice. “I’ll get some clothes on.”
Her voice followed him to the bedroom. “You look as if you�
��d been on a month-long drunk.”
“No,” he said. “I’ve been having, let us say, some remarkable adventures.”
He joined her five minutes later. Margaret was tall and long-legged, with an attractive tomboy abruptness of movement. In a crowd, Margaret was inconspicuous. But looking at her now Burke thought he had never known anyone more appealing. Her hair was dark and unruly, her mouth wide with a Celtic twitch at the corners, her nose crooked from a childhood automobile accident. But taken together her features produced a face of startling vivacity and expressiveness, where every emotion showed as clear as sunlight. She was twenty-four years old, and worked in an obscure division of the Department of the Interior. Burke knew her to be without guile, and as innocent of malice as a kitten.
She watched him with a puzzled frown. Burke realized that she was awaiting some explanation for his absence, but try as he might, he could think of no convincing story. Margaret, for all her own guilelessness, was instantly aware of falsity in others. So Burke stood in the living room, sipping coffee, refusing to meet Margaret’s eye.
Finally, in an attempt at decisiveness, he said, “I’ve been gone almost a month, but I can’t tell you where I’ve been.”
” ‘Can’t’ or ‘won’t’?”
“A little of both. It’s something I’ve got to make a mystery of.”
“Government business?”
“No.”
“You’re not—in some kind of trouble?”
“Not the kind you’re thinking of.”
“I wasn’t thinking of any particular kind.”
Burke flung himself moodily down into a chair. “I haven’t been off with a woman or smuggling in dope.”
She shrugged, and seated herself across the room. She inspected him with a clear dispassionate gaze. “You’ve changed. I can’t quite understand how—or why—but you’ve changed.”
