by Jack Vance
Night Lamp
Jack Vance
Dedicated to:
Alexia Schulz
Danae Schulz
Eric Fedrowisch
One
1
Toward the far edge of the Cornu Sector of Ophiuchus, Robert Palmer’s Star shone brilliant white, its corona flaring with films of blue, red and green color. A dozen planets danced attendance, like children careening around a maypole, but only the world Camberwell knew that narrow range of conditions tolerant to human life. The region was remote; the early explorers were pirates, fugitives and fringers,[1] followed by miscellaneous settlers, to the effect that Camberwell had been inhabited for many thousands of years.
Camberwell was a world of disparate landscapes. Four continents with intervening oceans, defined the topography. The flora and fauna, as always, had evolved into forms of unique particularity, the fauna having attained such a bizarre variety, with habits so startling and destructive, that two continents had been set aside as preserves where the creatures, large and small, biped or otherwise, could hop, pounce, lumber, run, rumble, pillage and grind others to bits, as met their needs. On the other two continents the fauna had been suppressed.
The human population of Camberwell derived from a dozen races which, rather than merging, had clotted into a number of stubbornly discrete units. Over the years the differentiation had produced a picturesque tumble of human societies, so that Camberwell had become a favorite destination for off-world xenologists and anthropologists.
The most important town of Camberwell, Tanzig, had been built to the dictates of a precise plan. Concentric rings of buildings surrounded a central plaza, where three bronze statues a hundred feet tall stood facing away from each other, arms raised in gestures whose purport had long been forgotten.[2]
2
Hilyer and Althea Fath were Associate Professors at Thanet Institute on the world Gallingale. Both were associated with the College of Aesthetic Philosophy. Hilyer’s special subject was the Theory of Concurrent Symbols; Althea studied the music of barbaric or semi-barbaric peoples, typically performed on unique instruments using unconventional scales to produce bizarre harmonies. Such musics were sometimes simple, sometimes complex, usually incomprehensible to alien ears, though often fascinating. Many times the old farmhouse where the Faths lived had resounded to strange sounds, along with impassioned argument as to whether the word “music” might truly apply to such extraordinary noises.
While neither Hilyer nor Althea would have described themselves as youthful, still less would they have admitted to middle age. Hilyer and Althea were both conservative in their natural tendencies, though not necessarily conventional, both subscribing to the ideals of pacifism and both indifferent to social status. Hilyer was slight if sinewy of physique, sallow, with mouse-gray hair thinning back from a high forehead, and a manner of cool urbanity. His long nose, lofty eyebrows, a thin drooping mouth, gave him a faintly disdainful expression, as if he were noticing an unpleasant odor. In sheer point of fact, Hilyer was mild, carefully polite, and disinclined to any sort of vulgarity.
Althea, like Hilyer, was slender, though somewhat more brisk and cheerful. Without herself noticing the fact, she was almost pretty, by reason of bright hazel eyes, a pleasant expression, and a head of chestnut brown curls, worn without reference to style. Her temperament was cheerful and optimistic, and she had no trouble dealing with Hilyer’s occasional small irascibilities. Neither Hilyer nor Althea took part in the earnest striving for social prestige which dominated the life of most folk; they belonged to no clubs and commanded no “comporture”[3] whatever. Their areas of expertise dove-tailed so neatly that they were able to undertake joint off-world research expeditions.
One such expedition took them to the semi-civilized world Camberwell beside Robert Palmer’s Star. Arriving at the dilapidated Tanzig spaceport, they rented a flitter and set off at once to the town Sronk, near the Wyching Hills, at the edge of the Wildenberry Steppe, where they planned to record the music and study the lifestyle of the Vongo gypsies, eighteen tribes of which roamed the steppe.
The gypsies were fascinating folk, on many levels. The men were tall, strong, with long legs and arms, intensely active and athletic, proud of their ability to leap over thornbushes. Neither men nor women were well-favored. Heads were long and meaty, with dull pinkish-plum complexions, coarse features, shocks of varnished black hair and short spade beards also varnished. The men painted white circles around their eye-sockets to emphasize the glare of their black eyes. The women were tall, buxom, with round cheeks, large hooked noses and hair cut square at ear level. Both men and women wore picturesque garments to which were sewed the teeth of dead enemies: the booty of intertribal vendettas. Water was considered an enervating, even despicable, fluid, to be shunned at all costs. No gypsy allowed himself or herself to be bathed, from infancy until death, for fear of rinsing away a magic personal unguent which, oozing from the skin, was the source of mana. A rank beer was the drink of choice.
The tribes were hostile in accordance with intricate formulae involving murders, mutilations and gleeful scarification of captured children, to make them vile in the eyes of their parents. Often these children were banished by their horrified parents to wander the steppes alone, where they became assassins and musicians expert in the playing of a tandem flute, forbidden to all other musicians. This musician-assassin caste included both men and women, and all were required to wear yellow trousers. The women, on becoming pregnant and giving birth, stealthily abandoned the child in the crèche of their native tribe, where it was tolerantly raised in proper style.
The gypsy tribes gathered four times a year at specified encampments. The host tribe provided the music, pridefully attempting to awe the musicians of rival tribes. The rival musicians, after jeering at the music of their hosts, were in due course allowed to play, along with assassins and their tandem flutes. Each tribe played its most secret and powerful music, which the musicians of the other tribes attempted to duplicate, in order to gain dominance over the souls of the tribe from whom the tune had been stolen. Such being the case, anyone discovered recording the music was instantly throttled. The Faths, in order to record the music in safety, wore small internal devices which could not be detected by external inspection. Such were the desperate exigencies to which the dedicated musicologist must submit, the Faths told each other, with wry grimaces.
For an off-worlder to visit a Vongo encampment was, at any time, an unnerving experience, but the tribal camp meetings were even more intense. A favorite pastime of the young bucks was to kidnap and rape the girls of another tribe, which caused a great hubbub, but which seldom came to bloodshed, since such exploits were considered juvenile pranks, at which the girls had probably connived. A far more serious offense was the kidnap of a chief or a shaman, and the washing of him and his clothes in warm soapy water, in order to deplete him of his sacred ooze. After the washing, the victim was shorn of his beard and a bouquet of white flowers was tied to his testicles, after which he was free to slink back to his own tribe: naked, beardless, washed and bereft of mana. The wash water was carefully distilled, finally to yield a quart of yellow unctuous foul-smelling stuff, which would be used in tribal magic.
The Faths, upon making gifts of black velvet fabric, were allowed to visit such a convocation, and managed to avoid trouble, the threat of which seemed to curdle the air around them. They watched as at sundown a bonfire was set alight. The gypsies feasted upon meat boiled in beer along with ramp and soursaps. A few minutes later, musicians gathered by one of the wagons and began to produce odd squeaking noises, apparently tuning and warming their instruments. The Faths went to sit in the shadow of the wagon and started their recording machines. The musicians began to play strident insistent ph
rases, which gradually diverged into harsh permutations and apparently irrelevant squeakings provided by a yellow-trousered assassin on his tandem flute. Reacting to the clang of gongs, the process repeated itself. Meanwhile, the women had started to dance: a graceless waddle in a slow counter-clockwise circle around the fire. Black skirts swept the ground; black eyes glittered above a curious black demi-mask, covering mouth and chin, upon which a great leering mouth had been painted in white pigment. From each depicted mouth hung a simulated tongue six inches long, painted bright red. The tongues swung and lolloped as the women jerked their heads from side to side.
“This will haunt my dreams,” Hilyer croaked under his breath.
“Maintain your strength, for the sake of science!” Althea told him.
The dancers sidled forward, dipping and advancing first the right leg, bending it and wallowing the massive right buttock around, drooping the right shoulder forward to catch the movement, then repeating the process from the left.
The women’s dance ended and they went off to drink beer. The music became louder and more emphatic; one by one the men stepped out to dance, kicking first forward, then backward, then performing odd contortions with arms akimbo and shoulders shuddering, followed by a leap forward, and then more of the same. At last they too went off to drink beer and boast of their leaps. The music started once again and the Vongo men started a new dance, cavorting about at random, inventing wonderful combinations of kicks, jumps and acrobatics, each crying out in triumph as he completed a particularly difficult evolution. At last limp with fatigue they went off to the beer tubs. They were still not finished. After a few moments the men returned to the edge of the firelight, where they engaged in the curious practice of “louthering.”[4] At first they stood drunkenly reeling, peering up at the sky, pointing to the constellations they intended to disparage. Then, one after another, they threw clenched fists high, and shouted taunts and challenges toward their distant opponents. “Come, all you washed rats, you parvenus and soap-eaters! Here we stand! We are ready for you; we will eat your gizzards! Come, bring on your fat-cheeked warriors; we will tear them into bits! We will douse them in water! Fear? Never! We defy you!”
Almost as if on cue, a bolt of lightning flashed out of the sky and rain pelted down in a sudden deluge. Croaking and cursing, the Vongos dashed for the cover of their wagons, and the area became deserted, save for the Faths who took the opportunity to run to their flitter. They returned to Sronk, happy with the night’s work.
In the morning the Faths wandered the Sronk bazaar, where Althea bought a pair of unusual candelabra to augment her collection. They found no musical instruments of interest, but were told that at the market village Latuz, a hundred miles to the south, gypsy instruments of all kinds, some new, some antique, were often to be found at the back of the market stalls. No one wanted such junk, so the prices would be low, except for the Faths, who would be recognized as off-worlders, and the prices would instantly become high.
On the following day the Faths flew south, skimming low over the road which followed the desolate Wyching Hills, with the steppe extending away to the east.
Thirty miles south of Sronk they came upon an unsettling scene. In the road below four gangling peasant youths armed with cudgels were carefully clubbing to death a squirming creature which lay in the dirt at their feet. Despite oozing blood and broken bones, the creature tried to defend itself and fought back with a desperate gallantry which transcended bravery and seemed to the Faths sheer nobility of spirit.
Whatever the case, the Faths dropped the flitter down upon the road, leapt to the ground and thrust the youths back from their limp victim, who they now saw to be a dark-haired urchin five or six years old, emaciated as if from hunger and dressed in rags.
The peasant boys stood resentfully to the side. The oldest explained that the creature was a wildling, no better than an animal, who would, if allowed, grow to become a robber or a depredator of crops. It was sensible to exterminate such vermin when the opportunity offered, as of now, so—if the travellers would be good enough to step aside, they would get on with their work.
The Faths scolded the slack-jawed peasant lads, then with great care lifted the battered child into their vehicle, while the peasant lads looked on in baffled disapproval. Later they would regale their parents with the weird conduct of the odd folk in funny clothes, probably off-worlders, to judge by the way they spoke.
The Faths took the semi-conscious body to the clinic at Sronk, where Doctors Solek and Fexel, the resident medical officers, nurtured the boy’s flickering vitality, until finally the boy’s condition had stabilized, and he seemed to be out of danger.
Solek and Fexel stood back, shoulders sagging, faces drawn, but gratified by their success. “A hard pull,” said Solek. “I thought we’d lost him.”
“Give the boy credit,” said Fexel. “He doesn’t want to die.”
The two surveyed the still form. “A handsome fellow, even with all the bruises and bandages,” said Solek. “How could anyone abandon a child like that?”
Fexel examined the boy’s hands, teeth, and touched his throat. “About six years old, I’d say. He might well be an off-worlder, upper class at a guess.”
The boy slept. Solek and Fexel went off to take some rest, leaving a nurse on duty.
The boy slept on, slowly growing stronger. Inside his mind fragments of memory began to renew broken linkages. The boy stirred in his sleep, and the nurse on duty, looking into his face, was startled by what she saw. She immediately summoned Doctors Solek and Fexel. They arrived to find the boy straining against the devices which held him immobile. His eyes were closed; he hissed and panted, as his sluggish mental processes quickened. Oddments of memory fused into strings. The old synaptic nodes reformed and the strings became blocks. Memory produced an explosion of images too awful to be borne. The boy went into hysteria, causing his broken body to grind, squeal and convulse. Solek and Fexel stood aghast, but only for an instant. Then, throwing off their shock, they administered sedation.
Almost immediately the boy relaxed and lay quiet, his eyes remaining closed, while Solek and Fexel watched uncertainly. Was he asleep? Apparently.
Six hours passed, during which the doctors took time to rest. Returning to the clinic, they cautiously allowed the sedation to dissipate. For a few moments all seemed well, then once again the boy erupted into a raging fit. The sinews of his neck corded; his eyes bulged against the restraints. Gradually, the boy’s struggling became more feeble, like a clock running down. From his throat came a wail of such wild grief that Solek and Fexel jerked into motion and applied new sedation, to forestall a fatal seizure.
At this time a research fellow from the Tanzig Central Medical Facility was at hand, conducting a series of tutorial seminars. His name was Myrrle Wanish; he specialized in cerebral dysfunctions and hypertrophic abnormalities of the brain in general. Seizing upon opportunity, Solek and Fexel brought the injured boy to his attention.
Doctor Wanish looked down the list of breaks, fractures, dislocations, wrenches and contusions which had been inflicted upon the boy, and shook his head. “Why is he not dead?”
“We have asked the same question a dozen times,” said Solek.
“Up to now he has simply refused to die,” said Fexel. “But he can’t hold out much longer.”
“He’s had some sort of terrifying experience,” said Solek. “At least, that is my guess.”
“The beating?”
“Possibly, but my instincts say no. When he remembers, the shock is too much for him. So—what have we done wrong?”
“Probably nothing,” said Wanish. “I suspect that events have welded a loop, with feedback bouncing back and forth. It gets worse instead of better.”
“And the remedy?”
“Obvious! The loop must be broken.” Wanish surveyed the boy. “There’s nothing known of his background, I take it?”
“Nothing.”
Wanish nodded. “Let’s have a loo
k inside his head. Keep him sedated while I set up my gear.”
Wanish worked for an hour connecting the boy to his apparatus. At last he finished. A pair of metal hemispheres clasped the boy’s head, exposing only the fragile nose, mouth and chin. Metal sleeves gripped his wrists and ankles; metal bands immobilized him at chest and hips.
“Now we begin,” said Wanish. He touched a button. A screen came to life, displaying in bright yellow lines a web which Wanish identified as a schematic chart of the boy’s brain. “It is obviously topologically distorted; still—” his voice dwindled as he bent to examine the screen. For several minutes he studied the twining networks and phosphorescent mats, meanwhile uttering small exclamations and sharp hisses of astonishment. At last he turned back to Solek and Fexel. “See these yellow lines?” He tapped the chart with a pencil. “They represent overactive linkages. When they tangle into mats, they cause trouble, as we have seen. Needless to say, I oversimplify.”
Solek and Fexel studied the screen. Some of the linkages were thin as spider webs; others pulsed with sluggish power; these latter Wanish identified as segments of a self-reinforcing loop. In several areas the strands coiled and impacted into fibrous pads, so dense that the individual nerve was lost.
Wanish pointed his pencil. “These tangles are the problem. They are like black holes in the mind; nothing which touches them escapes. However, they can be destroyed, and I shall do so.”
Solek asked: “What happens then?”
“To put it simply,” said Wanish, “the boy survives, but loses much of his memory.”
Neither Doctor Solek nor Fexel had anything to say. Wanish adjusted his instrument. A blue spark appeared on the screen. Wanish settled himself to work. The spark moved in and out of the pulsing yellow tangles; the luminous mats separated into shreds, which faded, dissolved and were gone save for a few ghostly wisps.
