Araminta Station

by Jack Vance

  By all tenets of logic - so Glawen told himself - the guilty person was Arles. Drusilla had proved an extremely weak reed when asked to verify Arles’ account of the evening. Her manner was careless and flippant; the alibi she provided Arles was almost worse than none at all.

  The interview with Drusilla had been conducted on the seaside terrace of the Hotel Araminta, where Drusilla had just finished her breakfast. Now she sat sidewise on a bench, arms clasping her knees, a breeze rippling her pale pinkish-blond hair, her lavish buttocks stretching taut the fabric of her white knee-length trousers. As she thought back to the fateful night of the Grand Masque, a coy smile brought dimples to her cheeks.

  “Do you want the plain truth? You do? Then here it is! I was drunk, far beyond the call of duty.” She shook her head in rueful pride for the magnitude of her achievement. “No question about it, and I feel no remorse whatever. I had just decided that everyone I knew was either a sour fish, a yahoo or a stinken scoundrel. I was furious with Florrie” - here she referred to Floreste - “and my fiancé just laughed when I told him about it. That’s Namour, as you probably know: charming and debonair, but something of a cad. I really don’t know how I put up with him! Spanchetta, strange to say, can twist him around her finger. My word, how she hates me! Foof!” The sound was intended to convey the intensity of Spanchetta’s dislike. “Anyway I thought I’d just show them all; I went tinkety-tanko and had a famous time all to myself, and I still don’t care!”

  “What of Arles?”

  “Yes, true. Arles was there, for a while - I remember watching part of the Phantasmagoria with him; we couldn’t miss that since we’re both Mummers. But I haven’t a clue as to what happened next - at least after he tried to take me off down the riverbank – I remember that well enough - but I wouldn’t go, down there among all those frogs and brambles and pinchbugs, and he marched off in a huff. After that it’s all a great glorious whirl. I think I went to sleep on the bench; at least that’s where I woke up, and it was already long after midnight, with the dismasking already done. Arles came back and I made him take me home as I wasn’t feeling my best.”

  Drusilla’s testimony brought only gloom to Bureau B. Arles was considered probably guilty, but no one could formulate a decisive case against him, since another person, using the second primordial costume, could easily have done the deed.

  The uncertainty was reinforced by a peculiar circumstance, which cost Sergeant Kirdy Wook dear. He was ordered to go to the Mummers’ wardrobe and take the two primordial costumes into custody. The time was late in the day; Kirdy’s schoolwork urgently needed attention; he postponed the task until the next day. At that time, when he went to take up the costumes, they were gone, and the wardrobe attendant could only say that they had been there the day previously.

  Kirdy’s negligence on this occasion, compounded by his failure to report Arles’ absence from patrol, earned him a demotion and a reprimand from Bodwyn Wook.

  Kirdy listened to the admonitions with a wooden half-smiling composure which only irritated Bodwyn Wook the more. He snapped: “Well, then, sir, what do you have to say for yourself?”

  Kirdy said: “I was prepared for the reprimand and I accepted it, as I’m sure you noticed, with good grace. The demotion however is excessive, and truly not fair!”

  “Indeed!” said Bodwyn Wook. “How so?”

  Kirdy frowningly considered the matter and expressed himself as delicately as he could. “Sometimes, sir, a person must be guided by his principles.”

  The statement jerked Bodwyn Wook bolt upright in his chair. He responded in a voice ominously gentle: “You feel then that the orders of your superiors must run in concert with your personal convictions before you feel obliged to obey them?”

  Kirdy hesitated, then said: “I suppose that, to be honest, I would have to answer yes.”

  “Amazing. Where and how did you develop this inconvenient idea?”

  Kirdy shrugged. “Last summer with the Mummers I did a great deal of thinking, and also exchanged views with Floreste.”

  Bodwyn Wook eased back into the depths of his chair. He placed the tips of his fingers together and studied the ceiling. At last he said: “Ha-hah! Let us review your case.”

  “That was what I hoped you’d say, sir.”

  Bodwyn Wook paid him no heed. “First, you are a Wook. Few Wooks indeed have become prancing, dancing, gallivanting performers. We do not consider histrionics to be a dignified profession. Therefore I make the following analysis with extreme reluctance.”

  Kirdy’s large earnest features sagged. “And how is that, sir?”

  Bodwyn Wook slowly brought his gaze down from the ceiling. “On the basis of what you have told me, you apparently have two options for a career: the Mummers or Bureau B. Much can be said for the Mummers. You can indulge your fantasies to the utmost, and your temperament is allowed full sway. If you are chanting a popular ditty and Floreste requires that you make an ogling grimace to the right while thrusting your pelvis to the left, you can claim that your ‘principles’ stand in the way. Floreste will perhaps blink at you nonplussed, but because of his insights, he will concede your right to thrust your pelvis in whatever direction you choose. So much for the Mummers. At Bureau B conditions are different. Oh my word but they are different! Here ‘principles’ mean the same as orders from high-ranking officers. The philosophy which guides your professional life is not your own, not Floreste’s, but mine. Is all this absolutely clear?”

  “Certainly, but surely there are -”

  “None whatever.”

  “What if I am ordered to perform tasks contrary to my conscience?”

  “If you have even a twinge of apprehension, as of this instant I will accept your resignation from Bureau B.”

  Kirdy said mulishly: “I could with as much justice ask you to resign.”

  Bodwyn Wook could not restrain a chuckle. “So you could. In five seconds, which of us do you think would be ejected from the office?”

  Kirdy stood silent, his large pink features disconsolate.

  Bodwyn Wook asked briskly: “Well, then: which is it to be?”

  “It is obviously in my best interests to make a career with Bureau B.”

  “That is not the point, and you have not answered my question.”

  “I choose Bureau B. I have no choice.”

  “And what of the ‘principles’?”

  Kirdy’s round blue eyes were limpid with hurt and resentment. “I suppose that I must compromise them.”

  “Very well.” Bodwyn Wook jerked his thumb toward the door. “That is all.”

  Kirdy made a final bitter complaint: “I still do not consider the demotion justified!”

  “That sort of reaction is not unusual,” said Bodwyn Wook. “Out with you, before I stop laughing and start thinking.”

  Kirdy swung about and departed.

  * * *

  Chapter III, Part 2

  Winter ran its course and spring came to Araminta Station. Grudgingly the obsessions which gripped Glawen’s mind yielded to the vernal influences. He had done his utmost; he could do no more - at least, not for the moment. Sessily Veder receded to a melancholy ache in his memory.

  Glawen turned his pent energies into schoolwork and won to his usual high levels of achievement. Arles, compelled by the most urgent pressures, performed well enough to avert the imminence of expulsion.

  The year went its course, and another year followed. Glawen arrived at his nineteenth birthday with an SI, or Status Index, of 23: somewhat too high for comfort, and Glawen began to feel cold fingers of apprehension, although Scharde assured him that there was definitely no cause for panic. “At least not yet,” said Scharde.

  In the three years since his sixteenth birthday Glawen had changed little. He had grown as tall as Scharde, and from some source had gained an indefinable air of competence and decision, which was almost precocious. Like Scharde he was now spare and slender, with square shoulders and narrow hips. Again like Scharde
, he carried himself with an understated economy of motion, almost elegant in its simplicity. His face, while less gaunt, bony and predacious than that of Scharde, was further softened by luminous dark hazel eyes, a cap of short thick black hair and a long generous mouth with a pensive droop at the corners: a face somewhat irregular and by no means classically handsome but one which romantic maidens found fascinating to consider. Glawen nowadays seldom thought of Sessily Veder except sometimes when he walked alone in the country or stood on the shore looking out to sea, when he might whisper: “Sessily, Sessily, where have you gone? Is it lonesome out there?”

  Across the years the facts of the case, as known to Bureau B, had seeped into the public awareness, and Arles’ guilt had become accepted as fact, provable or not. The situation titillated some and repelled others, while Spanchetta could hardly speak for mortification. Only the Bold Lions provided refuge for Arles - not so much from either loyalty or tolerance, but because it was felt that Arles’ membership lent a special rakehelly devil-take-all panache to the group.

  As the months and years passed, folk of the station became inured to his presence. Arles gradually regained something of his former standing, and in due course swaggered about affairs with near his old aplomb, although now his wit had a truculent overtone which seemed to imply: “So you take me for a deviate and a murderer? Very well, if that’s what you think, don’t be surprised by what you get, and be damned to all of you!”

  With the coming of summer Arles went off-world with the Mummers, where he functioned as Floreste’s aide, and the atmosphere at Araminta Station seemed easier and lighter for his absence.

  Glawen’s SI dramatically improved, by reason of a death and a retirement, which brought his number down to an encouraging 21, an almost sure guarantee of Agency status, and a great weight was lifted from his soul.

  Another noteworthy event marked the end of summer: the return of Milo and Wayness Tamm from a long sojourn on Earth. They took up residence at Riverview House, and enrolled for the fall term at the lyceum.

  Their presence gave rise to a flutter of discussion. According to the stereotypes of Araminta Station, Naturalists tended to be odd, crotchety and unconventional, with puritanical tendencies. Milo and Wayness, however, confounded the popular expectation. Both were conspicuously clean, intelligent and well-favored; both wore their simple Earth-style clothes with flair; both conducted themselves with a total lack of either self-consciousness or affectation: all of which aroused not a few pangs of envy and sniffs of deprecation among those who regarded themselves as the arbiters of taste.

  Glawen found the two much as before. Milo, tall and austerely handsome, still seemed wry, clever and saturnine: an intellectual aristocrat. Despite his careful good manners, Milo made few friends. Uther Offaw, the most intelligent of the Bold Lions, discovered in Milo a kindred soul, but Uther Offaw himself was considered bizarre and rather untidy, if not actually unstable; why else would he remain among the vulgar Bold Lions?

  Seixander Laverty, arbiter of another group known as the Intolerable Ineffables, felt Milo to be “an elitist: caustic and insufferably vain”: an opinion which Milo found gratifying. Ottillie Veder, of the Mystic Fragrances, wondered if Milo hoped “merely to show his face to bring girls cringing up to clasp his knees.”

  Milo, in response to the report, said no, this was not what he hoped.

  Another Fragrance, Quhannis Diffin, found Milo “- shall we say, a bit hoity-toity. Of course the same would apply to Wayness, though unquestionably she’s stunning to look at.”

  In Glawen’s opinion, three years had worked few changes on Wayness. She had grown taller by an inch, but her figure remained as before: the next thing to boyish, and her glossy dark hair, dark luminous eyes and dark eyebrows still made a striking contrast with her beautiful pale olive skin. How, Glawen marveled, could he ever have thought her plain?

  Wayness was discussed no less carefully than Milo. The statuesque Hillegance Wook, also a Mystic Fragrance, discerned in Wayness no figure whatever. “I’ve seen wet weasels with more shape,” said Hillegance. This opinion was definitely not endorsed by Seixander Laverty of the Ineffables (“She’s round where it counts, with nothing left over for slop and that’s how it should be”), nor by any of the Bold Lions, who studied her with fascinated interest. Wayness showed little tendency to flirt, which experts among the Bold Lions diagnosed as a case of sexual frigidity, but they could not agree as to the best method for curing the unfortunate girl of her affliction.

  The term began. Milo and Wayness entered classes and adapted themselves to the new routines. Glawen undertook to be of assistance and explained the traditions and special customs of the school as best he could. Milo and Wayness accepted their generally cool reception by the other students with equanimity. Milo told Glawen: “You would find it even more difficult at Stroma, where the cliques are, in effect, little secret societies.”

  “Still -”

  Milo held up his hand. “Truly, it’s quite inconsequential. I definitely don’t care to join any groups, nor, I’m certain, does Wayness. Your concern is wasted.”

  “Just as you say.”

  Milo laughed and clapped Glawen about the shoulders. “Come, now, don’t be annoyed! I’m happy that you like me well enough to worry.”

  Glawen managed a laugh of his own. “The situation would still annoy me, even if I didn’t like you.”

  Toward Wayness Glawen felt something more complicated than simple liking, and he was not sure how to deal with the emotion. She entered his thoughts ever more regularly and almost against his will, since he wanted no more heartaches. It would be dreadful, he thought, to fall in love with Wayness and then discover that she reciprocated not at all. And then what would he do?

  Wayness’ impersonal amiability gave no clue as to her feelings. Glawen even suspected sometimes that she went out of her way to avoid him, which caused him new pangs of doubt and puzzlement. In sheer frustration Glawen threw himself down in a chair, gazed out the window and tried to come to some sort of decision. If he attempted a closer relationship with the girl, and she politely but definitely discouraged him, as seemed probable, then he would be miserable. On the other hand, if he failed to make the effort and simply went brooding about his affairs, then he lost even more definitely by default and would also be miserable – in fact, more miserable than ever because now he would feel shame for his cowardice . . . Glawen took a deep breath. What was he, then? A Clattuc or a milksop? Girding himself with all his courage, Glawen called Wayness on the telephone: “It’s Glawen here.”

  “Indeed! And to what do I owe this honor?”

  “This is a personal call. I’d like to do something special with you tomorrow, but I have to ask you first.”

  “It’s certainly polite of you to give me a choice, and I’m favorably impressed. In fact, I’m even a bit excited. What do you have in mind? I hope it’s something I like - although I’d probably agree anyway.”

  “Tomorrow should be a fine day for sailing. I thought we could take the sloop down to Ocean Island for a picnic.”

  “That sounds quite nice.”

  “Then you’ll go?”

  “Yes.”

  * * *

  Chapter III, Part 3

  The day could not have been finer had Glawen made all the arrangements himself. Syrene shone bright in the blue morning sky; a cool breeze from the northeast left an invigorating tingle on the skin as it passed by, and also blew from exactly the right quarter.

  Glawen and Wayness, arriving early at the Clattuc boathouse, boarded the sloop, hoisted sail and cast off lines. The boat drifted out upon the river, caught the breeze, danced and plunged, then swung about and moved downstream: across the lagoon, through the river mouth and out upon the ocean. Glawen set the wind vane to hold a course south by east; the sloop sailed away from the shore and into a region of endless slow swells of transparent blue water, just barely ruffled with cat’s-paws.

  They made themselves comfortable on th
e cockpit cushions. “I like this kind of sailing,” said Wayness. “The world is serene, and it induces me to be serene. There is nothing to be heard but the soft sound of my voice. Guilt and remorse are wisps of the imagination. Responsibilities are of even less account. Schoolwork: less than bubbles in the wake!”

  “If only it were so,” said Glawen. “I’m sorry you reminded me.”

  “Reminded you of what? Surely it can’t be that bad!”

  “You’re just lucky that you’re a girl and it can’t happen to you.”

  “Glawen, please don’t be cryptic. I don’t like mysteries. What has disturbed you so? Is it me? Do I talk too much? I like it out here on the ocean!”

  “I probably shouldn’t discuss the matter,” said Glawen. “But - why not? Last night Bodwyn Wook ordered me to do something awful.”

  Wayness uttered a nervous laugh. “I hope it doesn’t have anything to do with me. Like marooning or throwing overboard.”

  “Worse,” said Glawen gloomily.

  “Worse? Is there anything worse?”

  “Judge for yourself. I am commanded to join the Bold Lions.”

  “Bad, I agree. But not worse . . . What did you say?”

  “First I’ll tell you what I should have said: ‘If you are so keen on the Bold Lions, join them yourself!’ But I was tongue-tied for shock. Finally I asked: ‘Why me? Kirdy is already in the group!’ He said: ‘I am quite aware of the fact. Kirdy, however, is a bit moony, and not always predictable. We need you!’ I asked again: ‘But why? Why me?’ All he would say was: ‘You’ll find out in due course.’ I said: ‘Evidently I am to be a spy.’ He said: ‘Naturally! What else?’ I mentioned that at last I could cherish Arles’ enmity, since he would never allow me in the group. He just laughed and said never fear; I would be a Bold Lion before the week was out. And that is why I am surly and glum.”