by Jack Vance
“What of the ladies? Are they dignified too?”
“They’d like to be, I’m sure, but they’re Vs. this and Vs. that.”
“Which means what?”
Kirdy shrugged. “Floreste said it meant ‘Vessel’, but he might have been joking. They wear long black gowns and funny black hats. Floreste said it was because ladies were inherently frivolous. The scientist ladies looked more woebegone than anything else. I’m told that each morning at dawn everyone bathes in cold water.”
“I’d be woebegone too,” said Glawen.
Kirdy gave an abstracted nod. “We heard strange stories about the Sanart Scientists.”
“The strangest of all is that six Sanart Scientists went out to Thurben Island, along with Sir Mathor Borph and Sir Lonas Medlyn from Halcyon.”
“Those last two are Patrunes, which means ‘aristocrats.’ Ordinarily they’re not on good terms with the Sanart Scientists, but I guess on Thurben Island all cats are gray. Ah, me. It’s none of our business, after all.”
Glawen turned him a puzzled glance. “Certainly it’s our business, if it helps us identify Ogmo.”
“Don’t you really think it’s a lot of wasted energy? This is just one of Bodwyn Wook’s famous flaming uproars. The old baboon fears he’ll be ignored otherwise. The Thurben Island parties are stopped; what more does he want?”
“He wants to capture the villains responsible, so that they won’t do it again. It’s a fine idea.”
“I’m not so sure,” said Kirdy. “Get rid of one villain; two others jump up to take his place. This Ogmo business is a sheer mare’s nest, a tangle of false starts and folly. And whom do we find skulking and hiding and dashing about in a lather of sweat and discomfort? Is it Bodwyn Wook? Not on your life. It’s a pair of young varlets, Glawen Clattuc and Kirdy Wook.”
Glawen said dolefully: “That is our lot in life.”
“Bah!” said Kirdy. “Why should we bother? The same stuff goes on at Yipton, if someone cares to pay the price.”
“I suspect that you are right,” said Glawen. A soft voice from the nunciators announced lunch. “In any event, this is our assignment and I’d prefer to do it properly than otherwise. What about you?”
Kirdy merely turned Glawen a stony glance, which Glawen pretended not to notice.
The two went aft to the dining saloon and seated themselves at a table. A popup screen displayed the bill of fare; Kirdy glanced at it, then looked away.
Again Glawen raised his eyebrows. Kirdy was full of surprises.
Glawen asked: “What looks good to you?”
“I’m not particular. I’ll have whatever you’re having.”
Glawen was reluctant to make himself responsible for the quality of Kirdy’s meals. “You’d better order for yourself. I don’t want to be blamed if you don’t like what you get.”
“I’ll just have some bread and stew.”
“That’s simple enough, although here it’s called ragout.”
“I don’t care what it’s called.”
Glawen put through the order. Kirdy was served the ragout, but found it not to his liking. “I wanted plain stew. This is doused up with some strange extragalactic sauce. I wish you had ordered stew, as I asked.”
“After this, you take care of your own meals. Why should I order your stew in the first place?”
Kirdy shrugged but offered no explanation. Glawen watched him surreptitiously. He asked cautiously: “These bits and pieces of your conscious mind - are they starting to come together?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Too bad. Bodwyn Wook is hoping that this trip, with new scenery and new experiences, will straighten you out. What is your opinion of that?”
“He’s wrong, but he is the master, and must be obeyed.”
“That’s one way of looking at it,” said Glawen.
Kirdy went on in a bleak voice, “Everything considered, I’d just as soon be home. I don’t know anything about this Ogmo business. Perhaps it is right; perhaps it is wrong. Your company is forced on me, despite my reluctance; each time you speak my fist balls up so that I may smash in your face. It may be a good and proper act; still I am a careful man and I desist, because I would forfeit your assistance out here among these strange people and strange noises. I would be left alone. Alone, alone, as if groping in the dark.”
Glawen managed an uneasy grin. “Your premises are distorted but your analysis is correct. If you smashed my face, I would not only smash your face but I would have nothing more to do with you. So, continue to desist.” And he added: “Especially since I am your appointed master and this is my order.”
Kirdy pursed his lips. “True! that is a good point.”
As the voyage progressed, Kirdy became ever more dependent, a situation Glawen found both irking and bizarre. Kirdy’s favorite topics were the old times, when he and Glawen were children. In painstaking detail he recalled incidents which Glawen had forgotten, then derived meanings and portents which Glawen usually found both farfetched and inaccurate.
After a few such episodes Glawen tried to shift the focus of Kirdy’s attention forward in time. And finally one morning as they sat over breakfast Kirdy spoke of his experiences at Yipton. “I amaze even myself. They thought me a compliant lout, a creature wadded together of mush and putty, with bird droppings for brains.”
Kirdy paused to reflect, showing a smile of bitter irony to some startled folk at a nearby table. “So they gave me the first dose of stuff, and even identified it. ‘Now for a little taste of nyene,’ said the Yip: a scurrilous little toad who might well have been Titus Pompo himself. ‘This will bring you close upon basic truths and you will see the flow of existence from both the underside and the top perspective together; it makes, so I am told, for an interesting view.’
“It was then that they learned my mettle. I kicked out and crushed the jaw of one. I struck another with my fist and smashed the bones of his head, so that his eyes rolled around like a comical toy. I looked to Titus Pompo - I shall call him that - but he dodged behind the table. I turned the table over upon him and jumped up and down trying to crush him; then I discarded the table that I might more easily tear him limb from limb, but more of the Oomps were coming so I jumped from the window and into the canal.
“They never found me, for I slid through the slime into the space under the pilings, and there I lurked, where none dared come for me.” Kirdy chuckled: a low gurgling sound which caused Glawen’s stomach to knot. “So I was at liberty, in the realm of the yoots. Aha! Those were the times! How shall I describe them? The place is stink and slime. The yoots – so the Yips call them – use this space as their own kingdom. How does one deal with the yoots? Through kindness and logic? What mean these in the crawl spaces under Yipton? Unreal! I horrified them with my deeds, so that they fled at the sound of my voice, sweetly calling to them. I ate their young and took the fish they had caught and ate these as well, and here was the secret - the truly great secret! The fish freely ingest the trapperfish which give off nyene as their poison, which in turn is rendered ineffective by the counterstuff of the fish, which the yoots call glemma.
“As soon as I took in the glemma a change came over me; I was no longer the raving wild thing and the yoots lost their dread and began to creep in on me. They fear the sight of their own guts, so I disemboweled some of them, but I was allowed no peace. I thought then I would swim in the canal by night, and take a boat, and make for the Marmion. I put this plan into effect, but I was captured and brought again to Titus Pompo, if indeed it was he.
“This time they took great pains with me, and tied me so I could not stir. ‘Now we shall see!’ said Titus Pompo. ‘Shall we taste some good nyene?’
“So I was dosed, but the stuff failed to act. I feigned madness, so that they gave me over to my own people, and I returned to Araminta Station. And then my prospects had changed. I had discovered new goals.” Kirdy stopped short.
Glawen prompted him: “And what are the new goal
s?”
Kirdy gave Glawen a crafty side glance. “I can trust no one. This I now know. Of all the realities, it is most certain: the purest, sweetest and only truth. I am I. All else is stink, slime and crawl space.”
Glawen had no immediate response to make. Presently he said: “If your goals are creditable, why should they be secret?”
“No matter. I will not think along these lines just now. One day you will learn the scope of my concept.”
Glawen said coldly: “I doubt if I will be interested.”
Kirdy eyed him with a blue gaze, cold and opaque, which at one time had seemed so candid and mild. “You must not be sure of anything. Change is everywhere. I even notice changes in myself. At one time I was hard and impermeable. I saw with total penetration, as I had never seen before. I defined the deceit behind every pretense. I saw people in bitter fact for animals prancing and sidling in ridiculous clothes. Before, such messages came to my subconscious, which kindly barred them from my frontal mind. Now this subconscious is my frontal mind and the new clarity of my view is uninhibited. All is lucid. Even you, Glawen! Your postures hide nothing from me.”
Glawen laughed shortly. “If they offend you, I suggest that you return to Araminta Station by the first ship out of Poinciana. I can manage well enough alone. Is that posture clear enough, or should I make it even more clear?”
“Unnecessary.”
“Well - what will you do? Return to Cadwal?”
“I will consider the matter.”
* * *
Chapter VII, Part 2
The Sagittarian Ray decelerated from intersplit, passed to the side of the blue star Blaise - the “Blue-eyed Devil” - and descended upon Natrice. Looking down from the promenade, Glawen saw a world of modest size, half in, half out of the blue glare of Blaise. Small polar ice caps showed as dazzling white blotches; other aspects of the topography were blurred by a dense atmosphere and high mists of ice crystals which reflected most of Blaise’s harmful actinics.
In the great saloon of the Sagittarian Ray the stewards had set up a large geographic globe representing Natrice. Glawen, studying the globe, had learned that the hemispheres were roughly symmetrical. A narrow equatorial sea, the Mirling, girdled the globe, with a coastal plain flanking each shore. To north and south the landscape tilted and folded to become first temperate uplands, then tall mountains, then tundra to the ice caps. In the north hemisphere, the regions beyond the coastal plain were the Lanklands; the corresponding areas to the south were the Wild Counties. The population of Natrice, through historical circumstances, was not large. A few small cities faced each other across the Mirling, of which the largest was Poinciana, also the site of the spaceport. Next in importance was Halcyon, almost directly across the Mirling.
The first permanent settlers had arrived while Natrice still lay “Beyond” - which meant past the recognized boundaries of the Gaean Reach. These folk were retired pirates, slavers, fugitives and desperados of every stripe, along with a leavening of ordinary criminals. They were united by a desire to enjoy their wealth in peace, secure from the persecutions of the IPCC. To this end they established comfortable estates along the shores of the Mirling, using an architecture in perfect harmony with the environment. Wide low domes of foamed concrete created vast areas of cool dim space, rich with muted colors. The mansions were surrounded by shaded pools and wonderful gardens; the fascinating native flora coexisted with equally remarkable imports. There were palms of every description, yellow umbrella trees, black sky-spikes; salmatics with drooping branches and heart-shaped blue-green leaves; sweet limes with dark green foliage, perpetually in bloom and yielding exquisite fruit; jasmine, hinano, kahalaea; ramifolia standing high on ten crooked legs; batter-brain, with branches terminating in clublike knots; sky grass, with pink, blue, green and violet stalks, used to border paths; silver fern and black fern, crying out when touched together; lattice dendrons dangling hundreds of carmine flower-gongs; rose-wisteria hybrids; balloon vines and flameflowers from Cadwal; red, black and white-striped golliwog barrels.
In such surroundings the cutthroats, tomb-robbers, slavers and scoundrels became the Patrunes of Natrice. They conducted their lives in full propriety, taught honor, duty and virtue to their children and distanced themselves from old associates, who tended to borrow money, or reminisce, or even ask advice on how best to commit some atrocious crime. To avoid these episodes, the Patrunes adopted the manners of aristocrats and trained their children in patrician aloofness, and so the centuries passed. The Patrunes became aristocrats indeed, with their origins now the subject of humorous conjecture, or even rueful pride.
When the Gaean Reach enveloped Mircea’s Wisp, a surge of immigrants moved into Natrice, not at all to the satisfaction of the Patrunes. Most numerous were the Sanart Scientists: an order of naturopathic philosophers who settled the Lanklands. They arrived from everywhere across the Gaean Reach in a continuing flood, which at last prompted the Patrunes to close the Poinciana spaceport to further immigration. The Scientists paid no attention to the proscription and opened their own spaceport on an upland meadow; the influx continued, with the Patrunes powerless to interfere. Finally the tide dwindled and stopped, apparently because all the Sanart Scientists of the Gaean Reach had now arrived on Natrice, in numbers of over a million. They farmed small acreages, smelted enough metal and cut enough timber to meet their needs, and in general kept to themselves, making no attempts to disseminate their creed, which was considered a self-evident truth.
In this assumption they were possibly correct, since the Sanart philosophy was disarmingly simple. Gaean man, so they asserted, was constituted a natural creature built of natural stuffs; his health, goodness, strength and sanity depended upon full synchrony with the “slow sweet harmonies of nature,” as they expressed it. These few words summed up the idea, from which the Sanart Scientists derived other more or less elaborate corollaries. They rejoiced in elemental processes: thunder, lightning. The flow of water, the warmth of sunlight, the rich substance of the soil, the flux of the seasons. Natural pleasures and natural foods were deemed good and worthy of enjoyment. Synthetic foods, artificial entertainments, unnatural habits, abstract aesthetics - these were considered bad and to be avoided, or even, in some cases, expunged. Loyalty, fortitude, persistence and austerity: all were good, all contributed to Truth and the Idea. Intemperance, overindulgence, indiscriminate tolerance were bad, along with gluttony, waste, excesses of luxury and sensuality.
The Idea was never urged or advocated. It was a concept of natural power, though still a human thought on a human scale. Above all else, the Sanart Scientists despised mysticism. They abhorred priests and their religions, which the Scientists considered so stultifying and preposterous as to verge upon criminal foolishness.
Almost equally to be deplored was the hedonism and idle luxury enjoyed by the Patrunes, who were parasites upon the yield of invested wealth. The ordinary tendency of the Sanart Scientist would be to shrug stonily and turn away, perhaps with a grim smile. Let the Patrunes wallow in their debasement as they liked - were it not for a disturbing circumstance: their frivolities and delightful revels set a bad example for impressionable young folk when for one reason or another they wandered into town. They would return to the Lanklands full of silly nonsense no longer in full accord with the Idea. Some “went bad,” and tried to implement their new notions. When reproached or corrected, certain of these “bad ones” became defiant and left the Lanklands altogether. The situation was not improving; rather, the new notions were infecting ever more young folk of the Lanklands like a vile disease.
Every three years district delegates met at a world Synod. At the last few of these, strong language had been used in connection with the Patrunes, who were identified as the source of the troubles. The most intemperate voices urged forthright action to rid Natrice of its “degenerates, whose lives are like septic sores!”
The proposals, when put to a vote, were always defeated, but by decreasing margins. An
uneasy tension was abroad in the Lanklands.
Along with the Sanart Scientists a miscellany of other folk had come to Natrice, bringing new skills, new talents, new enterprises. Upon gaining wealth, the newcomers, to the disgust of the Scientists, put on airs and attempted the Patrune life-style, but the more they exerted themselves the more sedulously were they snubbed by the Patrunes, until at last they made the best of their inferior status.
The Sagittarian Ray landed at the Poinciana spaceport. Glawen and Kirdy disembarked directly into a canopied carry-all which whisked them across the field, through the noonday glare of Blaiselight to the terminal. At a tourist information booth they were recommended to the Hotel Rolinda. “This is a resort of the highest style,” stated the tourist adviser, a fashionable young gentleman who had carefully draped his body in loose white garments, after the casual Patrune style. “The Rolinda is absolutely modern and adheres to the highest cosmopolitan standards.”
Kirdy made a soft sound of melancholy recollection. “Floreste favored Mirlview House for the Mummers.”
“Definitely and distinctly inferior,” declared the adviser. “The emphasis is upon achieving tolerable results with minimal effort. It is the resort of the Sanart Scientists when they visit the city; need I say more?”
“The Mirlview was indeed somewhat severe!” mused Kirdy. “Still, those were wonderful times! In those days I had so much to learn, and so much yet to undergo.” His voice dwindled away.
“Quite so,” said the adviser. “I cannot in good conscience recommend the Mirlview. Persons of judgment and high connection inevitably select the Rolinda. True, it is expensive, but what of that? If disbursing a dinket or two causes a person pain, he should best stay home, where his frugalities will not offend members of the travel industry. Are you in agreement?”
“Of course,” said Glawen. “I am a Clattuc and Kirdy is a Wook. For us the best is none too good; we use both jam and butter on our bread.”
