Night Lamp

by Jack Vance

  Estebel Pidy said, “When the sun has set, go outside, look into the sky. To one side is the bright galaxy; to the other is the black void, where one star hangs alone. That star is Night Lamp, with its planet Fader.”

  6

  The Distilcord, leaving Yellow Rose astern, set a course away from the glimmer of the galaxy and out into the void. Far ahead glittered Night Lamp, a vagabond star which had broken free of galactic gravity to wander alone, without orbit or destination.

  Time passed; Night Lamp grew bright and the Distilcord approached the world Fader. Maihac, searching HANDBOOK TO THE PLANETS, found no entry. Other reference works were also devoid of information. The ship’s macroscope computed the diameter to be slightly less than Earth-standard, with an approximately equal gravity. A single continent occupied much of the southern[13] hemisphere, with an ocean covering the remainder of the planet. Mountains corrugated the southern edge of the continent, with a deep dark forest shrouding the central area and a vast steppe sprawled across north, east and west. Neither the city Romarth nor any other settlement was immediately evident. Maihac finally noticed an agglomeration of white structures in the forest, camouflaged by the trees which grew among the structures and lined the avenues. A radio beacon located the spaceport Flad, alone in the middle of the northern steppe. The macroscope showed a desolate spatter of wind-blown sheds and warehouses. Maihac dispatched a notification of arrival, but received no response. He tried again, with the same result. Without further ado he set the Distilcord down upon the landing field near the terminal office. To either side were warehouses, a dormitory for staff, a makeshift machine shop, miscellaneous sheds: all in various stages of dilapidation. The steppe spread away in all directions, marked only by a road leading off to the south.

  The terminal building baked in the sunlight. No one came out to inspect the Distilcord.

  Maihac and Gaing alighted, and noticed in the open doorway of the machine shop a large man with a tangle of black curls and a black beard, who watched incuriously as the two of them crossed the field to the terminal office. They pushed through a door of molded sinter and entered a dingy lobby. The single occupant sat at a counter, relaxed, hands clasped before him, apparently in a state of profound reverie. He was middle-aged, thin, with a scholar’s pallor, ascetic features and a fastidious droop to his mouth. He wore a crisp gray tunic with a blue medallion clipped to his shoulder. He was, thought Maihac, an odd sort to be minding the counter at this remote and dusty outpost.

  The terminal manager, if such he were, became aware of Maihac and Gaing. His face changed; apparently he had been asleep with his eyes open. Rising to his feet, he looked through the window at the Distilcord. He turned back to the newcomers. “That is neither the Liliom nor the Audrey-Anthey; who are you?”

  “The ship is the Distilcord.” Maihac supplied registration particulars, which the manager looked over without any real interest. He examined Maihac and Gaing again, more closely than before. “Then you are not from the Lorquin Agency?”

  “No; we represent ourselves exclusively.”

  “So why do you come to Fader? It is a far voyage.”

  “We carry a cargo of small tools which we hope to sell at Romarth.”

  The manager asked dubiously, “Are these weapons, or can they be used as weapons?”

  “Absolutely not; they are useful only in the construction business. We want to discharge our cargo at Romarth, which would be both efficient and convenient.”

  The manager showed a sour smile. “Those words have no currency at Romarth. The Roum do no work; hence no one cares much for either convenience or efficiency.”

  Gaing spoke impatiently: “If only for our own convenience, may we proceed to Romarth?”

  The manager shook his head. “Not without a special warrant, lacking which, you would be placed under instant arrest, and lose both ship and cargo.”

  “In that case, please issue the proper warrant.”

  Again the manager shook his head. “It is not as easy as all that. My authority is nil, or even less, since I am here for purposes of penal cogitation—now, happily, at an end.”

  Maihac asked, “Who then has the authority?”

  The manager pulled at his chin. “The only person with authority around here is Arsloe, at the machine shop.”

  “The man with the black beard?”

  “Yes; a surly sort of fellow, and an off-worlder like yourselves. He talks to Asrubal by radio when he wants something; even so, he can’t do anything for you. The warrant is available only at Romarth itself.”

  Gaing asked gruffly: “How do we get the warrant if we’re not allowed to go after it?”

  “Aha!” the manager exclaimed. “You think to have posed a tricky paradox, but you are wrong. You travel to Romarth for the warrant, then return.”

  “Fair enough,” said Gaing. “We will fly there in our flitter.”

  “No,” said the manager. “Nothing is easy on Fader. Such an act is also illegal.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because the flitter might fall into the hands of the Loklor, and become a dangerous weapon. They are enough trouble already; we take pains to deny them weapons and other such equipment. If you wish to go to Romarth, you must use the regular transport, like anyone else. There is in fact a train departing Flad tomorrow morning.” For the first time the manager showed a trace of animation. “I will be traveling aboard this train myself; my term of penitence is over and tomorrow I leave this dust hole and that sullen beast Arsloe behind—forever, or so I hope. I must take pains, of course, to avoid my previous faults.”

  “What did you do?” asked Gaing. “Did you—” and he coarsely suggested an act of sexual perversion committed upon the young daughter of the Chief Magistrate.

  “No, nothing like that. What I did was worse. I gave voice to unpopular opinions.”

  7

  Maihac and Gaing returned to the Distilcord, where they discussed their options. They could depart Fader and try to sell their cargo elsewhere, or they could make an effort to sell at Romarth. In the end they decided that Maihac should travel to Romarth aboard the train, while Gaing remained at Flad to guard the Distilcord and its cargo. It was an arrangement which pleased neither, but the manager had informed them that ships left unguarded were apt to be looted by bands of wandering Loklor.

  The trip to Romarth required six or seven days: three days across the Tangtsang Steppe, three or four days through the Blandy Deep Forest. If the warrant were granted expeditiously. Maihac would be back in two weeks. If the warrant were refused, Maihac would still return at best speed. Meanwhile he would keep in touch with Gaing by means of a portable radio.

  The sun set among streaks of plum and carmine cirrus. Dusk fell over the world, giving way to black night. In the east a large dim moon the color of silver-gold alloy floated into the sky, followed by another of the same size and color. Far to the south, a night creature set up a wild wailing which presently died, leaving behind an oppressive silence. The moons drifted across the sky and settled into the west. Hours passed. In the east the sky showed a saffron blush and presently the sun rose. The train had been assembled: a massive tractor unit rolling on six large wheels, a passenger wagon, a service wagon and three goods wagons. Maihac climbed aboard; half an hour after sunrise the train departed Flad and trundled south across Tangtsang Steppe toward far Romarth.

  Maihac found himself riding in the company of four other passengers, including the former terminal manager, whose name, so he learned, was Bariano of Ephrim House. The other three passengers were Roum of mature years, all of Urd House. Their demeanor was notably self-important, if not haughty. They used a chilly punctilio in their dealings with Bariano and, after a glance at Maihac and a few muttered words among themselves, they ignored his existence. While conversing among themselves they used a dialect incomprehensible to Maihac. When Bariano was included in the conversation, they spoke standard Gaean, using a stilted accent. Immediately upon boarding the train they c
ommandeered a table at the rear of the car, where they spread out documents and entered upon earnest discussions. Bariano sat to the side, looking out over the steppe, and Maihac did the same. There was little to see. The landscape was bleak, relieved by low hills in the distance and an occasional lonely sentinel tree. Closer at hand were thickets of brittle thornbush, spinneys of dull yellow spindlegrass, patches of lichen, the color and texture of scab.

  After a time Bariano became bored with his introspection and, rather grudgingly, allowed himself to converse with Maihac. He intimated that he held the other three passengers in low esteem. “They are no more than petty functionaries, intoxicated with their own importance, which is small. They come out to Flad at intervals to validate the Lorquin bookkeeping. Of course they never find even the most modest peccadillo, let alone any serious transgressions, since they are Urd, of the same house as Asrubal. Have you noticed their pink shoulder clips? That means their faction is Pink, while the faction of Ephrim House is Blue. Nowadays the factions are of little importance; in fact, it is a dying tradition. Still, it gives them no reason to love me. Also, I must admit that my time of penitence has marred my rashudo.”

  “ ‘Rashudo’?”

  “A local word. It means ‘reputation,’ ‘self-respect,’ and much more. You will find that the Roum psyche is highly complex, beyond any you have ever known before.”

  During late afternoon the train was halted by a troop of six Loklor nomads. Bariano told Maihac: “They are collecting a toll. Do nothing; say nothing. Show no curiosity. They will not become fractious unless provoked.”

  Maihac, looking through the window, saw six grotesque creatures close to seven feet tall: so massive and so awful as to seem almost majestic. Their skins appeared to be a horny integument, mottled yellow and russet. Their foreheads slanted back, narrowing into crests barbed with short spikes. The lower half of the faces were pinched and thin, so that under the nose-beaks, the mouths were small and folded into pads of cartilage. They wore greasy leather aprons, black vests, and iron-shod sandals.

  The driver of the train paid them six jugs of beer, which the Loklor slung over their shoulders, then filed past the passenger car. For a moment they leered through the windows at the passengers, then turned and loped away, across the waste. The tractor’s six wheels thrust at the road and the train lurched off to the south. On the following day another Loklor band appeared and collected another toll of the strong brew known as “Nacnoc.” Bariano and the three Urd officials became visibly tense. Bariano muttered to Maihac: “These are Strenke—the worst of all. If they come to look at you, sit like a stone or they may take you away, to ‘dance with the girls’ by the light of the two pale moons.”

  The Loklor, however, snatched their jugs and stood back, allowing the train to go its way with the five passengers sitting stiff as statues, eyes fixed on the floor.

  After the train had rolled a quarter mile, the passengers relaxed. The Urd officials gave vent to a flurry of angry remarks. Bariano, with a gloomy smile, told Maihac, “There you find the reality of the Tangtsang steppe, and perhaps of all Fader. We no longer control our habitat, if ever we did.”

  “I have a suggestion,” said Maihac. “You might or might not want to hear it.”

  Bariano’s eyebrows lofted high. “Aha! It seems that we have overlooked some elemental concept! Fortunately, you have come to set things right!”

  Maihac ignored the sarcasm. “A pair of armed guards with power-guns might solve the problem.”

  Bariano pulled thoughtfully at his chin. “The idea has a pleasing simplicity. We recruit several guards, arm them with imported power-guns. They ride the train and shoot a number of Loklor and deny them their Nacnoc. So far, so good! But what of the next run? The Loklor might gather on the Beresford Bluffs and roll boulders down the slopes, smashing the train and killing both guards and passengers. Then they confiscate the power-guns. At Romarth there is great anger and we send out a punitive expedition. The Loklor take to the forest and disappear. But they are not ones to forgive and forget! They surround Romarth, infiltrate the city by night, and take their revenge. Thereafter, we accept the inevitable and pay their toll. Your suggestion, despite its virtue of easy comprehension, is flawed.”

  “Perhaps so,” said Maihac. “But I have another, which you might like to hear.”

  “Of course!”

  “If you moved the spaceport to Romarth, you defeat all your problems at once.”

  Bariano nodded. “This scheme, like the first, is marked by its noble simplicity. Still, it has already occurred to us and has long been rejected, for a fundamental reason.”

  “What is the reason?”

  “In three words: we want to insulate Romarth from the Gaean Reach. Our ancestors traveled as far as they could, out of the galaxy, across the void to the star Night Lamp. Isolation was the guiding principle then, at the dawn of our history, as it is now in the sad glory of our sunset.”

  Maihac ruminated for a time, then asked, “Is the mood at Romarth so generally melancholy?”

  Bariano chuckled sourly. “Do I seem so dreary? Remember that I have just completed a term of punitive meditation at Flad, and I have become dour. But I am not the typical Roum cavalier,[14] who fends aside unpleasant ideas as if they were symptoms of leprosy. He builds his world and his perceptions in the context of his rashudo. He fixes all his attention upon the instant, which of course is sensible. There is no need for panic; imminence does not hang in the air, and the tragic grandeur of Romarth exalts the spirit. Still, the facts are dismal. The population is declining; half of the wonderful palaces are empty, home to the horrid creatures we call ‘white houseghouls.’ In two hundred years—perhaps more, perhaps less—all of the palaces will be empty and the Roum will be gone, except for a belated straggler wandering the lonely avenues, and the only sounds will be the padding of the houseghouls as they prowl the moonlit halls of old Romarth.”

  “It is a cheerless prospect.”

  “True, but we dismiss such thoughts with cool bravado and focus upon the arts of living. We are anxious to wring the last drop of sentience from every instant of life. Do not think us hedonists or sybarites, even though toil and drudgery are absent from our lives. We devote ourselves to the joys of grace, beauty, and creativity, all of which are controlled by strict conventions, along with much else. My disposition has always been restless and skeptical, and these traits have not served me well. At a symposium, I declared that modern efforts to create beauty were trivial and repetitive; I stated that everything significant had been done a hundred times over. My opinions were held to be pernicious. I was sent to Flad that I might revise my thinking.”

  “And you made the adjustment?”

  “Naturally. In the future I will keep my opinions to myself. The fabric of life at Romarth is delicate. Even my petty perturbations strain the social accord. If the spaceport were situated at Romarth, we would be exposed to a never-ending flux of novelty and contradiction; perhaps cruise ships would come and go, bringing hundreds of tourists to stroll our promenades, convert our old palaces into hotels, to sit at cafés around the beautiful Gamboye Plaza and Lallakillany Circus. The spaceport remains at Flad. We are spared the miseries of social infection.”

  “You might be losing more than you gain,” said Maihac. “The Reach is diverse. Have you thought to go out from Fader and explore other worlds?”

  Bariano found the idea amusing. “We all must deal with reckless impulses from time to time. Wanderlust is a basic urge. Still, there are practical reasons why we seldom travel. We are a fastidious folk. Proper food and lodging are priced beyond our means to pay. We are not interested in picturesque squalor. We cannot abide dirt or tainted food or foul accommodations. We don’t care to ride public transport among crowds of ill-smelling natives. Since suitable facilities command excessive prices, we prefer to remain at home.”

  “I must disabuse you,” said Maihac. “Your fears are exaggerated. I agree that when you travel, you must take the
bad with the good; everyone knows this. But the good, or at least the decent, is far more common and not hard to find. You need only take local advice.”

  Bariano said somberly, “So it may be, but these practical problems are simply too large to be solved. We can count on very little off-world income, since our exports barely pay for our imports. The surplus in Gaean sols is limited. Even if we wanted to travel off-world, we lack the sols to take us past Loorie.”

  Maihac reflected. “Lorquin Agency negotiates both imports and exports?”

  “True. There is usually a profit, which is deposited to our individual accounts at the Natural Bank at Loorie, where the accounts earn interest. Even so, they never amount to much; certainly not enough to take us away on a grand tour of the Gaean Reach.”

  “In spite of all this, does anyone ever take the risk and go traveling?”

  “Seldom. I have known two gentlemen who chose to wander. They traveled to Loorie, withdrew their funds from the Natural Bank; they took passage to unknown worlds of the Reach, and never returned. There were no messages. It was as if they were lost in an ocean of ten trillion faceless souls. No one wishes to share their fate.”

  An hour later Maihac noted another group of Loklor, standing on the round swell of a sand dune, silhouetted against the sky. They watched stolidly as the train passed, apparently indifferent to the prospect of Nacnoc.

  Bariano could not account for their seeming lassitude, except to remark that all Loklor were unpredictable. “These are Golks—probably as wicked and weird as the Strenke.”

  Maihac asked, “How can you distinguish one Loklor from another?”

  “In the case of the Golks, it’s simple enough. The Golk women weave a cloth from eel-grass. If you will notice, these bucks wear skirts of the stuff, rather than leather aprons.”

  Maihac saw that, for a fact, the massive haunches were wrapped in clay-colored kirtles, leaving the saffron russet chest bare. He watched until the Golks could no longer be seen, then turned back to Bariano. “Are they intelligent?”