by Jack Vance
“There are other advantages to residence here,” said McIntyre. “For instance, I am able to enrich the lives of passers-by with an occasional trifle of novel adventure.” He made a small gesture; two dozen crows swooped down and flew beside the automobile. They settled on the fenders, strutted back and forth along the hood, fouled the windshield.
The automobile squealed to a halt, the driver jumped out, put the birds to flight. He threw an ineffectual rock, waved his arms in outrage, returned to his car, proceeded.
“A paltry affair,” said McIntyre with a sigh. “The truth of the matter is that I am bored.” He pursed his mouth and blew forth three bright puffs of smoke: first red, then yellow, then blazing blue. “I have arrived at the estate of foolishness, as you can see.”
Fair surveyed his great-uncle with a trace of uneasiness. McIntyre laughed. “Enough; no more pranks. I predict, however, that you will presently share my malaise.”
“I share it already,” said Fair. “Sometimes I wish I could abandon all my magic and return to my former innocence.”
“I have toyed with the idea,” McIntyre replied thoughtfully. “In fact I have made all the necessary arrangements. It is really a simple matter.” He led Fair to a small room behind the station. Although the door was open, the interior showed only a thick darkness.
McIntyre, standing well back, surveyed the darkness with a quizzical curl to his lip. “You need only enter. All your magic, all your recollections of the green realm will depart. You will be no wiser than the next man you meet. And with your knowledge will go your boredom, your melancholy, your dissatisfaction.”
Fair contemplated the dark doorway. A single step would resolve his discomfort.
He glanced at McIntyre; the two surveyed each other with sardonic amusement. They returned to the front of the building.
“Sometimes I stand by the door and look into the darkness,” said McIntyre. “Then I am reminded how dearly I cherish my boredom, and what a precious commodity is so much misery.”
Fair made himself ready for departure. “I thank you for this new wisdom, which a hundred more years in the green realm would not have taught me. And now—for a time, at least—I go back to my crag in the Andes.”
McIntyre tilted his chair against the wall of the service station. “And I—for a time, at least—will wait for the next passer-by.”
“Good-by, then, Uncle Gerald.”
“Good-by, Howard.”
Alfred’s Ark
Ben Hixey, Editor of the Marketville, Iowa, Weekly Courier, leaned back in his chair, lit the stub of a dead cigar, inspected his visitor through the smoke. “Alfred, you look the picture of deep despair. Why the long face?”
Alfred Johnson, the local feed-and-grain merchant, made no immediate reply. He looked out the window, at his boots, at Ben, at his own thick hands. He rubbed his stiff brown hair, releasing a faint haze of dust and chaff. He said finally, “I don’t hardly know how to tell you, Ben, without causing a lot of excitement.”
“Begin at the beginning,” said Ben. “I’m a hard man to excite. You’re not getting married again?”
Alfred shook his head, grinning the painful grin of a man who has learned the hard way. “Twice was enough.”
“Well, give. Let’s hear the excitement.”
“Do you read your Bible, Ben?”
“Bible?” Ben clapped his hand down on the latest issue of Editor and Publisher. “Here’s my Bible.”
“Seriously, now.”
“No,” said Ben, blowing a plume of smoke toward the ceiling. “I can’t say as I’m a real deep-dyed student in such matters.”
“You don’t need the Bible to tell you there’s wickedness in the world,” Alfred said. “Lots of it.”
Ben agreed. “I’d never vote for it, but it sure helps circulation.”
“Six thousand years ago the world was like it is today—full of sin. You remember what happened?”
“Off-hand, no.”
“The Lord sent a great flood. He washed the world clean of wickedness. Ben, there’s going to be another flood.”
“Now Alfred,” said Ben briskly, “are you pulling my leg?”
“No sir. You study your Bible, you’ll see for yourself. The day is coming and it’s coming soon!”
Ben rearranged the papers on his desk. “I suppose you want me to print big headlines about this flood?”
Alfred hitched himself forward, struck the desk earnestly with his fist. “Here’s my plan, Ben. I want the good citizens of this town to get together. I want us to build an ark, to put aboard two beasts of every kind, plenty of food and drink, a selection of good literature, and make ourselves ready. Don’t laugh at me, Ben. It’s coming.”
“Just when is the big day?”
“June 20th. That gives us less than a year. Not much time, but enough.”
“Alfred—are you serious?”
“I most surely am, Ben.”
“I’ve always took you for a sensible man, Alfred. You can’t believe something so fantastic as all this.”
Alfred smiled. “I never expected you to take it on my say-so. I’m going to prove it to you.” He took a Bible from his pocket, walked around the desk, held it in front of Ben’s restless gaze. “Look here…”
For half an hour he argued his case, pointing out the significant passages, explaining implications which Ben might otherwise have missed. “Now,” he said, “now do you believe me?”
Ben leaned back in his chair. “Alfred, you want my advice?”
“I’d like your help, Ben. I’d like you and your family aboard this ark I’m fixing to build.”
“I’ll give you my advice. Get yourself married again. It’s the lesser of the evils, and it’ll take your mind off this flood proposition.”
Alfred rose to his feet. “I guess you won’t run an announcement in the paper?”
“No sir. And do you know why? Because I don’t want to make you the laughing-stock of the county. You go home and clean up, take a run into Davenport, get good and drunk, and forget all this stuff.”
Alfred waved his hand in resignation, departed.
Ben Hixey sighed, shook his head, returned to work.
Alfred returned a moment or two later. “Here’s something you can do for me, Ben. I want to put my business up for sale. I want to run a big ad on your front page. At the bottom I want you to print: ‘Flood coming June 20th. Help and funds needed to build an ark.’ Will you do that?”
“It’s your advertisement,” said Ben.
Two weeks later on a vacant lot next to his house, Alfred Johnson began construction of an ark. He had sold his business for a price his friends considered outrageous. “He stole it from you, Alfred!” Alfred shook his head. “I stole from him. In a year that business will be washed clean out of sight. I only took his money because in a year his money won’t be any good either.”
“Alfred,” his friends told him in disgust, “you’re making a fool of yourself!”
“Maybe so,” said Alfred. “And maybe while you’re swimming I’ll be standing. Ever think of that?”
“You’re really in earnest, Alfred?”
“Of course I’m in earnest. You ever hear of divine revelation? That’s what I had. Now if you’ve only come to jaw, excuse me, I gotta get to work.”
The ark took shape: a barge fifty feet long, thirty feet wide, ten feet deep. Alfred became something of a local celebrity, and the townspeople made it a practice to come past and check on progress. Alfred received a great deal of jocular advice.
“That barge sure ain’t big enough, Alfred,” called Bill Olafson. “Not when you consider the elephants and rhinoceroses and giraffes and lions and tigers and hippos and grizzly bears.”
“I’m not taking savage beasts,” said Alfred. “Just a few pedigreed cattle, cows, horses and sheep, nothing but good stock. If the Lord wanted the others saved he’d have sent me more money. I got just enough for what you see.”
“What about a woman, Alfred? You ain’t marri
ed. You planning to repopulate the world by this here immaculate conception idea?”
“If the right woman don’t come along,” said Alfred, “I’ll just up and hire a woman for the day. When she sees I’m the only man left alive, she’ll marry me quick enough.”
The fall passed into winter; spring came, and the ark was complete. Alfred began loading aboard stores of all kinds.
Ben Hixey came out to see him one day. “Well, Alfred, I must say you got the courage of your conviction.”
“It’s not courage, Ben. It’s cowardice. I don’t want to drown. I’m sorry some of you other folks ain’t cowards along with me.”
“I’m more worried about the H-bomb, Alfred. That’s what I’d like to build an ark against.”
“In just about a month there won’t be any H-bomb left, Ben. There won’t be bombs of any kind, never again, if I got anything to say about it—and I guess I will, the way things look.”
Ben surveyed the ark with wondering eyes. “You’re really convinced of this business, aren’t you, Alfred?”
“I sure am, Ben. There’s a lot of good folk I’ll hate to see go—but I gave you all warning. I wrote the President and the Governor and the head of Reader’s Digest.”
“Yeah? What did they say?”
“They wrote back thanks for my suggestions. But I could see they didn’t believe me.”
Ben Hixey smiled. “I don’t either, Alfred.”
“You’ll see, Ben.”
June arrived in a spell of wonderful summer weather. Never had the countryside looked so fresh and beautiful. Alfred bought his livestock, and on June 15th herded them aboard the ark. His friends and neighbors took photographs, and made a ceremonial presentation of a glass cage containing two fleas. The problem of securing a woman to become progenetrix of the future race solved itself: a press agent announced that his client, the beautiful movie starlet Maida Brent, had volunteered her services and would be aboard the ark on the morning of June 20th.
“No,” said Alfred Johnson. “June 20th begins at midnight. She’s got to be aboard on the night of June 19th.”
The press agent, after consultation with Miss Brent, agreed.
June 18th dawned bright and sunny, although radio and TV weather reports mentioned peculiar kinks in the jet stream.
On the morning of June 19th, Alfred Johnson, wearing new shoes and a new suit, called in on Ben Hixey. “Last time around, Ben.”
Ben looked up from an AP dispatch, grinning rather ruefully. “I’ve been reading the weather report.”
Alfred nodded. “I know. Rain.” He held out his hand. “Goodbye, Ben.”
“Goodbye, Alfred. Happy landings.”
At noon on June 19th, deep dull clouds began rolling in from the north. Miss Maida Brent arrived at seven o’clock in her Cadillac convertible, and amid the mingled flickers of lightning and flashbulbs went aboard the ark. The press agent attempted to come aboard also, but Alfred barred the way. “Sorry. Crew is complete now.”
“But Miss Brent can’t stay aboard all night, Mr. Johnson.”
“She’ll be aboard for forty days and forty nights. She might as well get used to it. Now scram.”
The press agent shrugged, went to wait in the car. Miss Maida Brent would no doubt leave the ark when she was ready.
The rain began to fall during the evening, and at ten o’clock was coming down heavily. At eleven, the press agent sloshed over to the ark. “Maida! Hey Maida!”
Maida Brent appeared in the doorway of the cabin. “Well?”
“Let’s go! We’ve got all the stuff we need.”
Maida Brent sniffed, looked toward the massive black sky. “What’s the weather report say?”
“Rain.”
“Alfred and I are playing checkers. We’re quite cozy. You go on. Bye.”
The press agent turned up the collar to his coat, hopped stiff-legged back to the car, where he morosely tried to catnap. The thudding of the rain kept him awake.
Dawn failed to reveal itself. At nine o’clock, a wan wet gloom showed gutters ankle deep in water. The rain pelted down ever harder. Along the streets, cars driven by the curious began to appear, their radios turned to the weather report. Puzzled forecasters spoke of stationary cold fronts, occluded lows, cyclones and anti-cyclones. The forecast: rain.
The street became crowded. News came in that the Perry River Bridge had washed out, that Pewter Creek was in flood. Flood? Yes, flood!
Bill Olafson came splashing through the mud. “Hey Alfred! Where are you?”
Alfred looked calmly out of the cabin. “Hello, Bill.”
“My wife and kids want to take a look at your ark. Okay if I bring ’em aboard for a spell?”
“Sorry, Bill. No can do.”
Bill walked uncertainly back to the car. There was a tremendous rumble of thunder—he looked skyward in apprehension.
Alfred heard a sound from the rear of the ark. He pulled on his slicker, his boots, trudged back to find two teenaged boys and their girl friends mounting a ladder.
Alfred dislodged the ladder. “Keep clear, boys. Git away now. I don’t wanta speak to you again.”
“Alfred!” Maida’s voice came thinly through the thrash of rain. “There’s people coming aboard!”
Alfred ran back to meet a score of his friends and neighbors led by Bill Olafson carrying suitcases into the cabin. “Get off this ark, friends,” said Alfred in a kindly voice. “There’s not room aboard.”
“We came to see how things were,” said Bill.
“They’re fine. Now git.”
“I don’t think so, Alfred.” He reached over the side. “Okay Mama, pass up Joanne and the puppy. Quick. Before those others get here.”
“If you don’t go,” said Alfred, “I’ll have to make you git.”
“Just don’t try no funny stuff, Alfred.”
Alfred stepped forward; Bill hit him in the nose. Others of Alfred’s friends and neighbors lifted him, carried him kicking and cursing to the rail, threw him off the ark and into the mud.
From the street scores of people came running: men, women, children. They flung themselves up the rail, clambered aboard the ark. The cabin was crowded, the rails were thronged.
There was a clap of thunder; the rain lessened. Overhead appeared a thin spot in the clouds. The sun burst through. The rain stopped.
Alfred’s friends and neighbors, crowded along the rail, looked down at Alfred. Alfred, still sitting in the mud, looked steadily back. Around them the sun glistened on the wet buildings, the flowing streets.
Sulwen’s Planet
(A Canceling of Unknowns)
I
Professor Jason Gench, Professor Victor Kosmin, Dr. Lawrence Drewe, and twenty-four others of equal note filed from the spaceship to contemplate the scene on Sulwen Plain below. The wondering mutters dwindled to silence; a hollow facetiousness met no response. Professor Gench glanced sidelong toward Professor Kosmin, to encounter Professor Kosmin’s bland stare. Gench jerked his gaze away.
Boorish bumbling camel, thought Gench.
Piffling little jackanapes, thought Kosmin.
Each wished the other twelve hundred and four light-years distant: which is to say, back on Earth. Or twelve hundred and five light-years.
The first man on Sulwen Plain had been James Sulwen, an embittered Irish Nationalist turned space-wanderer. In his memoirs Sulwen wrote: “To say I was startled, awed, dumbfounded, is like saying the ocean is wet. Oh but it’s a lonesome place, so far away, so dim and cold, the more so for the mystery. I stayed there three days and two nights, taking pictures, wondering about the history, all the histories of the universe. What had happened so long ago? What had brought these strange folk here to die? I became haunted; I had to leave…”
Sulwen returned to Earth with his photographs. His discovery was hailed as “the single most important event in human history”. Public interest reached a level of dizzy excitement; here was cosmic drama at its most vivid: mystery, tragedy, cataclysm.
In such a perfervid atmosphere the ‘Sulwen Planet Survey Commission’ was nominated and instructed to perform a brief investigation upon which a full-scale program of research could be based. No one thought to point out that the function of Professor Victor Kosmin, in the field of comparative linguistics, and that of Professor Jason Gench, a philologist, overlapped. The Director of the commission was Dr. Lawrence Drewe, Fellow of Mathematical Philosophy at Vidmar Institute: a mild wry gentleman, superficially inadequate to the job of controlling the personalities of the other members of the commission.
Accompanied by four supply transports with men, materials, and machinery for the construction of a permanent base, the commission departed Earth.
II
Sulwen had understated the desolation of Sulwen’s Plain. A dwarf white sun cast a wan glare double, or possibly triple, the intensity of full moonlight. Basalt crags rimmed the plain to north and east. A mile from the base of the crags was the first of the seven wrecked spaceships: a collapsed cylinder of black and white metal two hundred and forty feet long, a hundred and two feet in diameter. There were five such hulks. In and out of the ships, perfectly preserved in the scant atmosphere of frigid nitrogen, were the corpses of a squat pallid race, something under human size, with four arms, each terminating in two slender fingers.
The remaining two ships, three times the length and twice the diameter of the black and white ships, had been conceived and constructed on a larger, more flamboyant, scale. ‘Big Purple’, as it came to be known, was undamaged except for a gash down the length of its dorsal surface. ‘Big Blue’ had crashed nose first to the planet and stood in an attitude of precarious equilibrium, seemingly ready to topple at a touch. The design of ‘Big Purple’ and ‘Big Blue’ was eccentric, refined, and captious, implying esthetic intent or some analogous quality. These ships were manned by tall slender blue-black creatures with many-horned heads and delicate pinched faces half-concealed behind tufts of hair. They became known as ‘Wasps’ and their enemies, the pale creatures, were labeled ‘Sea Cows’, though in neither case was the metaphor particularly apt.
