Night Lamp

by Jack Vance

  Garlet glanced down at Jaro. He said, “I’m going to look into the Foundance. You may stay here.”

  Jaro frowned toward the heavy brown structure, which he had so carefully avoided on a previous occasion. He spoke disapprovingly: “Why go there? You’ve already seen it once.”

  “I want to see it again. You don’t need to come.”

  Jaro reluctantly rose to his feet. “I’ll come. Those were my orders.”

  Garlet turned his head sharply. Jaro thought that he might be smiling. Garlet set off along the Esplanade. At the ramp he paused and looked back over his shoulder. Jaro stared in wonder. Odd!

  For an instant Garlet’s gaunt hollow-cheeked face, with its gleaming eyes had become the face of a sly wolf. Jaro blinked and looked again. The peculiar illusion was gone.

  Garlet spoke softly, “There are bad smells inside this place. When you were here before, you decided to wait outside. Do so again, if you like.”

  Jaro saw that Garlet was taunting him. The overt hostility was not unwelcome; his duty toward this intransigent person was becoming more and more nebulous. He said, “I can tolerate it if you can.”

  “Oh yes. I am used to bad smells. I hardly know one from another.”

  Garlet turned and loped down the ramp; Jaro hastened to catch up with him; together they passed through the open portal and into a wide corridor, which at one time had served as a reception hall. A row of dilapidated benches ranged the wall to the right. To the left windows overlooked a production area on a lower level. Garlet spared only a glance toward the windows and proceeded down the corridor. Jaro halted to survey the scene below. He was awed by the confusion of massive kettles, vats, tanks, tubs, tangles of glass plumbing and heavy banks of energy converters, peculiar archaic equipment—some suspended on rods from overhead girders, some balanced precariously on pedestals, some perched on staging close above the slurry tanks. Jaro turned to look after Garlet, who had passed through the archway at the far end of the corridor and no longer could be seen. Jaro’s subconscious suspicions began to take definite shape; he could not dismiss the notion that Garlet might be pursuing a devious plot. Jaro uneasily felt for the RTV at his belt.

  The archway at the end of the corridor opened into what evidently had been an administrative office: an area now scattered with hulks of old desks, storage compartments, broken chairs. Garlet was nowhere to be seen.

  Another archway led into the room adjacent: a workshop cluttered with the wrecks of machine tools, gauges, meters and other equipment. Garlet stood by a door leading out upon the balcony which flanked the production area thirty feet below. The door was ajar; Garlet was on the point of stepping through the opening, out upon the metal mesh of the balcony deck.

  Jaro called, “Hold up! Where are you going?”

  Garlet looked back from the open door. “The breeding tanks are below. If you are interested in the bad smell, you must come out here.”

  “No need,” said Jaro. “I can smell it well enough in here.”

  “Ah! But if you want to test the full strength, you will find it only out on the balcony, where the steam rises from below.”

  “Some other time,” said Jaro. “I am not a connoisseur of such things.”

  Garlet pondered a moment, then asked, “Are you not interested in the breeding processes?”

  “I saw all I care to see from the window in the hall. I am astonished that the system functions. The technicians are either masters of improvisation—or madmen.”

  Garlet turned to look around at the old machinery. “I don’t understand these devices.” He pointed. “What is that thing?”

  “That is a positronic welder. It spurts positrons and where they strike, the heat of the reaction bonds materials together.”

  Jaro explained the function of several other mechanisms.

  Garlet turned his attention to the workbench. “What are those things? Some are strangely shaped.”

  “They are hand-tools. That object is a pipe wrench. On the wall is a dimensional shaper. That long rod is an ordinary pry bar. Those are gouges, with blades of an artificial substance called ‘gorgolium,’ which never grows dull.”

  “And that thing yonder?”

  “It is a meter, for measuring stress.”

  Garlet studied Jaro skeptically. “How do you know all these things?”

  “I worked several years in a machine shop at the Thanet spaceport.”

  “No matter. Do you care to sit? I am about to reveal my plans.”

  Jaro leaned back against the workbench. “Speak on, but try to be brisk, since before long we must return to Carleone.”

  “I will speak to the point. The plans are firm, so please suggest no changes.” Garlet’s voice was calm and reasonable. “The ideas you are about to hear are not idle conjecture. I have built upon a foundation of indisputable first causes, so that the unifying force which controls the cosmos is revealed in full clarity. I refer, of course, to ‘balance.’ If a system ignores ‘balance,’ it will collapse. The laws of dynamic equity govern everything large and small, near and far. They may be applied to any appropriate phase of existence.”

  “Yes; very interesting,” said Jaro. “We will take up the subject again some other time, but now we must be getting on back to Carleone.”

  “Not just yet,” said Garlet. He stood stern and straight, shoulders thrown back, eyes gleaming in their deep sockets, a peculiar pink flush coloring his cheeks. “The topic has an immediate application. I refer to the system which includes you and me. Over the years the ‘balance’ has been distorted into an abnormal shape, and is now in an unstable condition.”

  “This is neither the time nor the place for dialectics,” said Jaro. “In any case these ideas reflect your personal perspective, not mine; and certainly they represent no universal truth. However, we have no time to argue the matter. Let’s be out of here; for a fact the stink is oppressive.”

  Garlet’s eyes flamed. “Silence. Listen with care! The distortion exists: that is our premise. Let us develop the idea. Are you alert?”

  “Of course! Get on with it.”

  Garlet paced back and forth across the workshop. “At the beginning, Jaro and Garlet were one, and ‘balance’ existed. Then came the schism, and everything changed. Both pity and shame were ground underfoot. Jaro was ordained the singular and preeminent ‘I.’ The miserable Garlet became a huddle in the dark, lacking even so much as a pronoun to indicate his identity. He was nothing: a barely sentient plasm, a thing of the dark depths, only just able to realize that he was alive. So the years passed. With glacial torpor the thing developed. The grichkin Shim talked incessantly; the thing learned of ideas and their transfer. From Shim he learned his name, and a few other oddments, since Shim enjoyed his boasts. He spoke largely of many things, whether he had certain knowledge or none. From Shim, Garlet learned hunger, deprivation and spite; from Oleg he learned fear and pain. From his own inner faculties came sentience. You and I are the same stuff, and there was resonance between us. I became able to watch from the dark! I began to know yearning; I began to crave what I sensed of your enjoyments and gluttonies. In my longing I called to you, but you only hugged your privileges more tightly.

  “In the end Destiny has altered its face and suddenly an era of adjustment is upon us. We will stay at Romarth, and you must accept this plan with stoicism, even though you will now subordinate your joy to mine. Our first acts will be to engage the sympathy of the lovely maidens who saunter the streets in such profusion.”

  Jaro gave a painful laugh. “Garlet, be realistic! Your ideas are absurd. We are leaving Romarth this afternoon. You must adjust to this idea.”

  “Not so! You are wrong! You will stay here with me. Why? Because equipoise implies redress! I am entitled to solace! To this end you might wish to do a stint in the dungeons to show the sincerity of your grief I will assume the function of Shim, which truly would please me, and we will continue in this fashion until we agree that equilibrium has been restored.”
/>
  Jaro listened in awe. Garlet was not necessarily mad; by the tenets of his own universe he might be wise, but away from the fourth level dungeon, the mental tools he had fashioned so painfully were useless. Indeed, worse than useless.

  Jaro spoke gently, “Garlet, believe this as fact: I had no part in your misfortunes and I will accept no guilt. I will help you to a reasonable extent—but, once and for all, I am not staying with you at Romarth. I want you to come away, perhaps to Gallingale, and start a new life.”

  Garlet laughed in delight. “Now! You must take counsel with yaha! There is a choice, or better to say a divergence in destiny! The choice you must make is this: will you abide here at my command or will you try to thwart me again? If so, it will be the last time, for I shall have lost patience.”

  “Garlet! Be reasonable!”

  “The time of decision has come. It is a most important yaha. So—what is it to be? ‘Left’ or ‘right’? ‘Yes’ or ‘no’? ‘Life’ or ‘death’?”

  Garlet watched Jaro keenly. Then he cried: “The decision has come, and my patience is gone. ‘Death’ you have chosen; ‘death’ it shall be.”

  His posture stately and grave, Garlet walked to the workbench, picked up the pry bar, hefted it and found its length and mass to his satisfaction. He nodded, as if to say: “Yes; this will do admirably.” Then he turned to face Jaro, who displayed the RTV.

  “This,” said Jaro, “is a most powerful gun. In a twinkling it will reduce you to flaring particles.”

  “Just so,” said Garlet. “But I forbid you to use it in that manner. Give it to me.” He stepped forward, hand outstretched.

  Jaro backed away. He thought: If I put the gun away, I can probably subdue him, bar or no bar, and I will not need to kill him. Or so I hope. Jaro tucked the gun into his belt. “Garlet, put the bar down and let us leave this dreadful place.”

  “No. I shall abide here for a time. There are grichkin below; they will supply my gruel and salt fish.” He advanced upon Jaro, bar ready to strike. Jaro prepared to feint, seize Garlet’s arm and twist until the bar dropped from his fingers, and Garlet cried in pain. Garlet’s smile broadened. “I know what you have in mind.” He brought up his other hand and threw a stress-gauge into Jaro’s face. It struck Jaro full on the mouth and nose, blinding him and breaking his concentration. Garlet struck with majestic force, but Jaro in desperation lurched aside and the blow crushed his shoulder instead of his head. Jaro reeled back, to fall heavily, half through the door to the balcony. Garlet strode forward, to stand straddling Jaro like a vengeful colossus. With deliberation he raised the bar, as Jaro clawed the RTV from his belt. Garlet kicked, and the gun slid out upon the mesh of the balcony. Up went the bar; down with all force, so that Garlet’s eyes bulged with the effort. Jaro rolled frantically aside and the bar clattered down upon the mesh, jarring loose from Garlet’s grip. Jaro scrambled after the gun, left arm dangling limp. Garlet flung himself forward, hissing and screaming, to snatch the gun away from Jaro’s clutching fingers.

  Garlet stood back in the doorway, pointing the gun down at Jaro, who lay on the mesh of the balcony. Garlet said, “So it comes to this: the ultimate yaha. I ask, shall I kill you at the count of five or shall I wait for the unexpected impulse?” Garlet reflected, half-smiling, torn between two delightful choices. “Let it come as it comes! That is the soul of yaha. First, a subsidiary question: shall I shoot at your head, or your chest? Or shall I let the gun decide? The indecision is thrilling; it is yaha.”

  The two stared at each other. Garlet said, “The tension swells! It is about to bubble, to burst!”

  Jaro cried out, “Garlet, think what you are doing! I am your brother! I came here to help you!”

  Garlet smiled. “Nothing avails! My pain knows no redemption. Now!” His voice rose in a catch of excitement. “My finger closes on the trigger! I shoot!”

  Nothing happened. Garlet looked for a moment at the gun, puzzled. “Ah! Now I see; this is the way!” As he spoke, Garlet released the safety and fired.

  Jaro frantically rolled aside at the twitch of Garlet’s finger. He saw the blue energy flash downward past his head to hit the pedestal supporting a tall copper tank. The tank toppled into an energy converter, which exploded on impact. Glass pipes fell tinkling and clashing to the floor.

  Garlet seemed not to notice. Lips drawn back, he fired again as Jaro kicked at him. The bolt went wide and struck the work area. More converters exploded and burst into flames. Beneath the balcony screams rose from horrified grichkin and, perhaps, from white houseghouls on the sub-surface level.

  Garlet, with single-minded purpose, stepped forward and again fired down upon Jaro, who just managed to scramble behind a pillar. Now he watched the blue energy strike an enormous centrifugal separator that broke apart and fell into the slurry vats, smashing them and spilling their contents. Flames crackled and explosions sounded throughout the Foundance. Garlet at last became aware of the terrible destruction. He stared in surprise over the rail.

  Jaro pulled himself to his knees, then staggered upright, grasping the pry-bar that his hand had fallen upon. Garlet turned about, serene and confident. Jaro jabbed the pry-bar into his face. Garlet gave a cry of outrage and fell back against the rail. He raised the gun. Jaro struck swiftly with the bar and Garlet, jerking back, lost his footing and tumbled over the rail. He fell whirling and flailing into a pool of flaming reagents, writhed for a moment, then became still.

  Panting, Jaro looked down in horror and pity at the black corpse of his brother. It was over; there was nothing he could do. He turned, departed the Foundance, and ran at best speed to Carleone, while behind him tendrils of smoke rose into the sky.

  3

  Not until middle afternoon did the full impact of what had happened at the Foundance strike into the consciousness of the Roum. Even then, the implications of the event only gradually became clear. Gamboye Plaza thronged with the stunned folk of the city, who now realized that during the day, without warning or premonition, their lives had been irrevocably ravaged. Everywhere the same questions were heard: what had happened? How great was the damage? Was it definite that there would be no more Seishanee?

  The reality was hard to grasp. Changes would be gradual, as the labor force dwindled by attrition and the quality of life became ever more austere. There would be no more splendid pageants, no more grand banquets, no more gorgeous costumes except what could be salvaged and repaired. In about twenty years, or at most thirty years, the last of the Seishanee would be gone and the glorious traditions of old Romarth would become a memory.

  The options for the future were dismal. The Roum must either toil for sheer survival here on Fader, or they must emigrate to new homes somewhere among the worlds of the Gaean Reach. In fifty years all the palaces of Romarth would be abandoned, with only houseghouls to stare by moonlight across the decaying gardens. The prospect was dreary indeed, and the folk in Gamboye Plaza became ever more oppressed as they considered the future.

  Gradually it became known that off-worlders had caused the disaster. A great fury infected the Roum. Had Jaro or Skirl or Maihac been on hand, they would have fared badly. But the Pharsang was already far off in space, fleeing back toward Yellow Rose Star.

  4

  Early in the afternoon, Maihac met with the Select Committee in the grand hall at Carleone. Jaro had returned to tell his terrible tale only half an hour before, and it became Maihac’s painful duty to inform the Committee of the disaster. He did so in six crisp sentences.

  The ten dignitaries showed shocked white faces to Maihac, but for a time were unable to make coherent utterances. There were inarticulate stammers and guttural rasps of dismay; then, as if reacting to a common impulse, all sagged back into their seats. The Foundance had been destroyed; there would be no more Seishanee, and the folk of Romarth must face a difficult and dreary future.

  Maihac watched while the ten Roum assimilated the news. He wondered whether they still would want to hear his statement. His ideas we
re more cogent now than ever; he must speak, regardless of their probable disinclinations. A new thought occurred to him, and he wondered whether he dared express it to the company. The idea might well be resented, but even if they became furious, he carried the Ezelite handgun and was leaving Romarth within the hour; probably the worst they could do would be to revile him and call him a bumptious fool and a mischievous swine of an off-worlder. He had survived invective many times before.

  Maihac held up his hand to fix the committee’s attention upon himself. “Gentlemen, I sympathize with your distress, but since my time is limited and what I can tell you is important, I will ignore tact. Please do not expect to be soothed.

  “Originally we were to discuss the gradual decay of Romarth and its discouraging prospects. As I understand it, you wanted constructive suggestions as to how you might best deal with these problems. After what has happened, these problems become even more urgent, since you can no longer hope for gradual solutions. Changes must be made at once. There will be dislocation and discomfort whether you like it or not.

  “I am prompted to point out, and I do so very timorously, that what happened at the Foundance may not be an unmitigated calamity. Now you cannot indulge in long and stately deliberations; you have no choice but to act.”

  One of the grandees found his voice. “Action is easy to recommend, but more difficult to plan and organize.”

  “I agree,” said Maihac. “Here are several constructive ideas.

  “First, the entire Roum population might emigrate to other worlds of the Gaean Reach. This is an obvious concept, and probably the least appealing, since it is unpredictable and several generations might pass before a satisfactory standard of living could be achieved.

  “Second, and equally obvious, is the notion that the Roum themselves undertake the work now done by the Seishanee. I realize that you are congenitally averse to physical labor, but it is not so irksome as you may believe, especially when you use modern agricultural methods and machinery, along with material synthesizers.