Nopalgarth

by Jack Vance

  Tarbert moved, straightened up in his chair. “Yes, I hear you.”

  “Do you believe what I told you about the gher?”

  There was a moment’s hesitation. Then Tarbert gave a great sad sigh. “Yes. I believe you. There was something— I don’t know what—controlling me.”

  Burke studied him a moment. “I can fight the gher, if you won’t resist me.”

  Tarbert gave a weak laugh. “Then what? The nopal again? Which is worse?”

  “The gher.”

  Tarbert closed his eyes. “I can’t guarantee anything. I’ll try.”

  Burke looked back into the para-cosmos. Far away—or was it close at hand?—the orb of the gher flickered with caution and alarm. Burke took a fragment of nopal-stuff, tried to form it, but in the hands of his analogue the stuff was tough and refractory. By dint of great effort Burke worked the material, and finally achieved a lumpy bar. He confronted the far brooding form, feeling trivial, an infinitesimal David before a colossal Goliath. To attack, he must wield the bar across an immense gap… . Burke blinked. Was the distance so far? Was the gher, after all, so enormous? The perspectives twinkled and shifted, like the angles in a visual puzzle—and abruptly the gher seemed to hang no more than a hundred feet away—or perhaps as close as ten feet… . Burke jerked back startled. He hefted the bar, swung it sidewise. It struck the black hulk and collapsed as if it were foam. The gher—a hundred miles, a thousand miles distant—ignored Burke, the indifference more insulting than hostility.

  Burke glowered toward the monstrous thing. The internal orb swam and bulged, the myriad capillaries glistened with silken luster. He shifted his gaze, traced the fibril running to Tarbert’s head. He reached out, seized it, pulled hard. There was resistance, then the fibril parted, the sucker fell loose, twitching and squirming. The creature was not absolutely invulnerable; it could be hurt! Nopal settled swiftly for Tarbert’s unprotected scalp; Burke could see the mental emanations blooming like a luminous flower. One enormous nopal reached the prize first—but Burke interposed a fragment of nopal-stuff, encasing Tarbert’s head. The nopal drew back frustrated, the orbs solemn and minatory. The gher abandoned its placidity; the golden orb rolled and wallowed furiously.

  Burke turned his attention to Margaret. Her nopal glared back at him, aware of its danger. Tarbert raised his hand to deter Burke from hasty action. “Better wait—we might need someone to front for us. She’s still a Chitumih… .”

  Margaret sighed; her nopal calmed itself. Burke looked back to the gher, now remote, at the end of the universe, swimming in a cool black flux.

  Burke poured himself a cup of coffee, settled into a chair with a sigh of fatigue. He watched Tarbert who was staring into mid-air with a rapt expression. “Do you see it?”

  “Yes. So that’s the gher.”

  Margaret shuddered. “What is it?”

  Burke described the gher and the bizarre environment in which it lived. “The nopal are its enemies. The nopal are semi-intelligent; the gher displays what I would call an evil wisdom. As far as we’re concerned one is no better than the other. The nopal is more active. It seems that after gnawing about a month it can break the gher’s fibril, and displace the gher’s sucker-pad. I tried chopping at the gher, unsuccessfully. It’s the toughest object there— presumably because of the energy available to it.”

  Margaret, sipping coffee, looked critically at Burke over her cup. “I though you couldn’t be denopalized except by that machine… . But now—”

  “Now that I lack my nopal, you hate me again.”

  “Not so much,” said Margaret. “I can control it. But how—”

  “The Xaxans were quite explicit. They told me that the nopal could not be pulled loose from the brain. They never tried smashing the nopal into a mat. The gher wouldn’t allow it. Tarbert was too quick for the gher.”

  “An accident, pure and simple,” said Tarbert modestly.

  “Why aren’t the Xaxans aware of the gher?” Margaret demanded. “Why didn’t the nopal let them see it, or show it to them, as they did with you?”

  Burke shook his head. “I don’t know. Possibly because the Xaxans aren’t susceptible to visual stimuli. They don’t see in the sense that we do. They form three-dimensional models inside their brains, which they interpret by means of tactile nerve-endings. The nopal, remember, are flimsy creatures—stuff of the para-cosmos, balloons compared to the bricks we’re made of. They can excite relatively feeble neural currents in our minds—enough for visual stimulation, but perhaps they can’t manipulate the more massive mental processes of the Xaxans. The gher made a mistake when it sent the Xaxans to organize Earth. It ignored our susceptibility to hallucination and visions. So we’re in luck—temporarily. For the first round at least, neither nopal nor gher have won. They’ve only alerted us.”

  “The second round is coming up,” said Tarbert. “Three people won’t be hard to kill.”

  Burke rose uneasily to his feet. “If only there were more of us.” He scowled toward the denopalizing machine. “At least we can ignore that brutal thing.”

  Margaret looked anxiously toward the door. “We should leave here—go someplace where the Xaxans can’t find us.”

  “I’d like to hide,” said Burke. “But where? We can’t dodge the gher.”

  Tarbert looked off into space. “It’s an ugly thing,” he said presently.

  “What can it do?” quavered Margaret.

  “It can’t hurt us from the para-cosmos,” said Burke. “It’s tough, but it’s still no harder than thought.”

  “There’s an awful lot of it,” said Tarbert. “A cubic mile? A cubic light-year?”

  “Maybe just a cubic foot,” said Burke. “Maybe a cubic inch. Physical measurements don’t mean anything; it’s how much energy it’s able to turn against us. If for example—”

  Margaret jerked around, held up her hand. “Shhh.”

  Burke and Tarbert looked at her in surprise. They listened, but heard nothing.

  “What did you hear?” Burke asked.

  “Nothing. I just feel cold all over. … I think the Xaxans are coming back.”

  Neither Burke nor Tarbert thought to question the accuracy of her feelings. “Let’s go out the back way,” said Burke. “They won’t be here for any good purpose.”

  “In fact,” said Tarbert, “they’re here to kill us.”

  They crossed the workshop to the sliding doors which opened into the dark warehouse, stepped through. Burke slid the doors together, leaving a half-inch crack.

  Tarbert muttered, “I’ll check outside. They might be watching the back.” He disappeared into the dark. Burke and Margaret heard his footsteps echoing stealthily across the concrete floor.

  Burke put his eye to the crack. Across the shop, the door into the office eased open. Burke saw a flicker of movement, then the room exploded with soundless purple glare.

  Burke staggered away from the crack. A purple flickering light, thick as smoke, followed him.

  Margaret grasped his arm, supported him. “Paul! Are you—?”

  Burke rubbed his forehead. “I can’t see,” he said in a muffled voice. “Otherwise I’m all right.” He tried to look with the vision of his analogue—which might or might not be similarly affected. Straining into the dark, the scene began to come clear to him: the building, the screen of cypress trees, the ominous shapes of four Xaxans. Two stood in the office; one patrolled the front of the building; one circled around toward the warehouse entrance. From each, a pale fiber led to the gher. Tarbert was at the outer door. If he opened it, he would meet the approaching Xaxan.

  “Ralph!” hissed Burke.

  “I see him,” Tarbert’s voice came back. “I’ve thrown the bolt on the door.”

  With hammering pulses they heard the quiet sound of the outside latch being tried.

  “Perhaps they’ll go away,” whispered Margaret.

  “Small chance of that,” said Burke.

  “But they’ll—”

 
; “They’ll kill us, if we let them.”

  Margaret was breathlessly silent a moment. Then she asked, “How can we stop them?”

  “We can break their connection to the gher. Try to, at least. That might dissuade them.”

  The door creaked.

  “They know we’re here,” said Burke. He stared into nothingness, willing himself to see through his analogue’s eyes.

  Two Xaxans had entered the workshop. One of these, Pttdu Apiptix, took a slow stride toward the sliding doors— another and another. Staring into the para-cosmos, Burke traced the fibril which led to the gher. He reached forth his analogue hand, seized it, pulled. This time the struggle was intense. The gher by some means stiffened the fiber, and caused it to vibrate, and Burke felt a pang of vague pain as he heaved and pulled. Apiptix chattered with rage, clutched at his head. The fibril broke, the palp slipped away. Down upon the crested head plumped a nopal, plumes fluttering complacently, and Apiptix groaned in dismay.

  The back door to the warehouse jarred. Burke turned, to see Tarbert twisting at another fibril. It broke, a second Xaxan lost his link to the gher.

  Burke looked back through the crack into the workshop. Apiptix stood rigid, as if stunned. Two of his fellows entered the room, to stare at him. Burke reached forth with his analogue hands, broke one of the fibrils. Tarbert broke the other. The Xaxans came to a rigid halt, as if stunned. Nopal immediately settled on their heads.

  Burke, standing with eye to crack, watched in a turmoil of indecision. If the Xaxans had been acting under compulsion of the gher, all might be well. On the other hand, they were now Chitumih and he Tauptu—an equal incentive to murder.

  Margaret tugged at Burke’s arm. “Let me go out there.”

  “No,” whispered Burke. “We can’t trust them.”

  “The nopal are back on them again, aren’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can feel the difference. They won’t bother me.” Without waiting for Burke’s reply she pushed open the door, entered the shop.

  The Xaxans stood motionless. Margaret approached, confronted them. “Why did you try to kill us?”

  The chest-plates of Pttdu Apiptix clicked, stuttered; the voice-box spoke. “You did not obey our orders.”

  Margaret shook her head. “That’s not true! You told us we could have a week to make our arrangements. It’s been only a few hours!”

  Pttdu Apiptix seemed discomfited, uncertain. He turned toward the office door. “We will go.”

  “Do you still intend to harm us?” asked Margaret.

  Pttdu Apiptix made no direct reply. “I have become Chitumih. All of us are Chitumih. We must be purged.”

  Burke left the shelter of the warehouse and rather sheepishly came forward. The nopal newly established on Pttdu Apiptix ruffled its plumes furiously. Apiptix jerkily raised his hand; Burke moved more quickly. He seized the wad of nopal-stuff, thrust it down upon the Xaxan. The nopal was smashed, felted down over the crested gray head. Pttdu Apiptix staggered to the jolt of pain, peered drunkenly toward Burke.

  “You are no longer Chitumih,” said Burke. “You are no longer a creature of the gher.”

  “The ‘gher’?” inquired the voice-box, ridiculously toneless. “I do not know of the ‘gher’.”

  “Look into the other world,” said Burke. “The” world of thought. You will see the gher.”

  Pttdu Apiptix gazed at him blankly. Burke amplified his instructions. The Xaxan shuttered his eyes, lizard-gray membranes folding across the dull surfaces. “I see strange shapes. They make no solidity. I can feel a pressure… .”

  There was a moment of silence. Tarbert entered the shop.

  The Xaxan’s chest-plates suddenly rattled like hail. The voice-box gurgled, stammered, apparently balked by concepts not included in its index. It spoke. “I see the gher. I see the nopal. They live in a land my brain cannot form …. What are these things?”

  Burke slumped down into a chair. He poured himself some coffee, emptying the pot. Margaret automatically went to make fresh coffee. Burke drew a deep breath, explained what little he knew of the para-cosmos, including the area of his and Tarbert’s theorizing. “The gher is to the Tauptu what the nopal is to the Chitumih. A hundred and twenty years ago, the gher was able to dislodge the nopal from one Xaxan—”

  “The first Tauptu.”

  “The first Tauptu on Ixax. The gher provided the original sample of nopal-stuff—where else could it come from? The Tauptu were to become warriors for the gher, crusading from planet to planet. The gher sent you here to Earth, to expel the nopal, to lay bare the brains of Earth. Eventually the nopal would be eradicated; the gher would be supreme in the para-cosmos. So the gher hoped.”

  “So the gher still hopes,” said Tarbert. “There’s very little to prevent it.”

  “I must return to Ixax,” said Pttdu Apiptix. Even the mechanical delivery of the voice-box could not conceal his desolation of spirit.

  Burke chuckled morosely. “You’ll be seized and penned up as soon as you show your face.”

  The Xaxan’s chest-plates rang with an incisive angry clicking. “I wear the six-prong helmet. I am Space Lord.”

  “That makes no difference to the gher.”

  “Must we fight another war then? Must there be a new division into Tauptu and Chitumih?”

  Burke shrugged. “More likely either the nopal or the gher will kill us before we can start any such war.”

  “Let us kill them first.”

  Burke laughed shortly. “I wish I knew how.”

  Tarbert started to speak, then relapsed into silence. He sat with eyes half-closed, attention fixed on the other world. Burke asked, “Well, Ralph, what do you see?”

  “The gher. It seems to be agitated.”

  Burke channeled his own gaze into the para-cosmos. The gher hung in the analogue of the night sky, among great blurred star-spheres. It shivered and jerked; the central orb rolled like a pumpkin in a dark lake. Burke watched in fascination, and seemed to see in the background a wild remote landscape.

  “Everything in the para-cosmos has a counterpart in the basic universe,” mused Tarbert in a detached voice. “What object or creature in our universe is the counterpart of the gher?”

  Burke jerked his gaze away from the gher, stared at Tarbert. “If we could locate the gher’s counterpart—”

  “Precisely.”

  Fatigue forgotten, Burke hitched himself forward in his chair. “If it’s true for the gher, it should be equally true for the nopal.”

  “Precisely,” said Tarbert a second time.

  Apiptix came forward. “Denopalize my men. I wish to observe your technique.”

  Even without nopal or gher to distort his judgment, there could never be a camaraderie between Earthman and Xaxan, thought Burke. At their best they showed no more warmth or sympathy than a lizard. Without comment he took up the pillow of nopal-stuff and in quick succession crushed the three nopal, matting the fragments over the crested skulls. Then without warning he did the same for Margaret. She gasped, collapsed into her chair.

  Apiptix paid her no heed. “These men are now insulated from further nuisance?”

  “So far as I know. Neither nopal nor the gher seem able to penetrate the mat.”

  Pttdu Apiptix stood silent, evidently peering into the para-cosmos. After a moment his chest plates gave a rattle of annoyance. “The gher does not appear clearly to my visual organ. And you see it well?”

  “Yes,” said Burke. “When I concentrate on seeing it.”

  “And you can define its direction.”

  Burke pointed, up and off at a slant. Pttdu Apiptix turned to Tarbert. “You are agreed as to this?”

  Tarbert nodded. “That’s where I see it, too.”

  The horny chest-plates gave another rattle of annoyance. “Your visual system differs from mine. To me it appears”— the voice-box chattered as it came upon an untranslatable idea—“in all directions.” He stood silently a moment, then said, “The
gher has caused my people great hardship.”

  Something of an understatement, thought Burke. He went to the window. The eastern sky was dim with approaching dawn.

  Apiptix turned to Tarbert. “You made remarks about the gher, which I failed to comprehend. Will you repeat them?”

  “With pleasure,” said Tarbert politely, and Burke grinned to himself. “The para-cosmos apparently is subsidiary to the normal universe. The gher would therefore seem to be the analogue of a material creature. The same of course applies to the nopal.”

  Apiptix stood quiet, as he digested the implications of the statement. His voice-box spoke. “I see the truth of all this. It is a great truth. We must seek out this beast and destroy it. Then we must do the same for the nopal. We will find their home environment and destroy it, and in this manner destroy the nopal.”

  Burke turned away from the window. “I’m not sure that this is an unalloyed blessing. It might do the Earth people great harm.”

  “In what way?”

  “Consider the consequences if everyone on Earth suddenly becomes clairvoyant and telepathic?”

  “Chaos,” muttered Tarbert. “Divorces by the hundreds.”

  “No matter,” said Apiptix. “This must not be considered. Come.”

  “ ‘Come’?” asked Burke in surprise. “Where?”

  “To our space-ship.” He made a motion. “Hurry. Daylight is almost here.”

  “We don’t want to go aboard your space-ship,” argued Tarbert in the voice of one reasoning with a petulant child. “Why should we?”