The Anome

by Jack Vance

  In connection with color symbolism, the ideograms of Canton Surrume might be mentioned. Originally each word was represented by color strokes, in correct symbolical combination; the scribe wrote with as many as seven brushes in his fist. In due course a secondary system came into effect, employing monochromatic dots at various heights, indicative of color, which in turn evolved into a jointed line tracing the position of the color-indicators, and at last the sign for each word became a cursive ideogram, from which all reference to color had been lost.

  No area of Shant was too remote; from Ilwiy to the Straits of Pagane detonations occurred and felons lost their heads. It was known that the Anome employed deputies, somewhat tartly known as Benevolences, who subserved the Anome’s will.

  Garwiy, where the Faceless Man made his headquarters, was the largest city of Shant, the industrial node of all Durdane. Along the Jardeen River and in the district known as Shranke on the Jardeen Estuary were a hundred glass-works; foundries and machine-shops, bio-mechanical fabricating plants, bio-electric works where the organic mono-molecules of Canton Fenesq were stranded into null-ohm conductors, bonded to semi-living filters, valves and switches, to produce fragile, temperamental and highly expensive electronic gear. Bio-engineers commanded high prestige; at the opposite end of the social scale were the musicians, who nevertheless excited pangs of romantic envy in the settled folk of Shant. Music, like language and color symbology, transcended the canton boundaries, affecting the entire population.*

  * A notable exception: the Chilites of Canton Bastern.

  In Canton Amaze a thousand, two thousand musicians took part in the annual seiach: a vast wash of sound swelling and subsiding like wind, or surf, with occasional tides, vague and indistinct, of clear little waif-bells. More general was the music played by wandering troupes: jigs and wind-ups; set-pieces and sonatas; shararas, sarabands, ballads, caprices, quick-steps. A druithine might accompany such a troupe; more often he wandered alone, playing as he fancied. Lesser folk might sing words or chant poetry; the druithine played only music, to express his total experience, all his joy and grief. Such a person had been Etzwane’s blood-father, the great Dystar. Etzwane had never credited the account of Dystar’s death as related by Feld Maijesto; in his childhood daydreams Etzwane had seen himself wandering the roads of Shant, taking his khitan to fests and gatherings, until at last the two met; from here the daydream went various directions. Sometimes Dystar wept to hear music so lovely; when Etzwane identified himself, Dystar’s wonder exceeded all bounds. Sometimes Dystar and the indomitable youth found themselves opposed in a battle of music; in his mind Etzwane heard the glorious tunes, the rhythms and counter-rhythms, the clink of the jingle-bar, the gratifying rasp of the scratch-box.

  The daydreams at last had taken on a ghost of substance. Khitan slung over his narrow back, Etzwane trudged the roads of Shant, and all his future lay before him.

  Unless he were captured and taken back to Bastern.

  It was not beyond possibility that Osso would suspect the true state of affairs and call in the ahulphs once again. The thought put spring into Etzwane’s steps. He jogged along at his best speed, slowing to a walk only when his lungs began to labor. Rhododendron Way lay far behind; he journeyed under the stars, with the great black hulk of the Hwan rising to his left.

  The night wore on. Etzwane, no longer jogging, walked as fast as his aching legs would carry him. The road climbed a hill, rounded a spur. Behind spread a starlit landscape, gray and black, with a few far lights Etzwane could not identify.

  He sat on a stone to rest, and looked westward into Canton Seamus, which he had never seen before, though from men who passed along Rhododendron Way he knew something of the folk and their habits. They were stocky, ruddy-blond, and quick tempered; they brewed beer and distilled poteen, which men, women and children alike consumed without apparent effect. The men wore suits of good brown cloth, straw hats, gold rings in their ears; the women, who were stout and boisterous, dressed in long pleated gowns of brown and black, and wore combs of aventurine quartz in their hair. They never espoused men larger than themselves; in the event that fisticuffs took place after an evening at the tavern, the husbands held no physical advantage.

  The North Spur of the balloon-way passed through Seamus, connecting Oswiy on the north coast with the Great Transverse Line; the road Etzwane followed met the balloon-way at Carbade. As he looked off to the west, over the country he planned to travel, he fancied to see far away a red glimmer moving slowly across the sky. If his eyes were not at fault, the light marked the course of the balloon-way — though the time was late and the wind was still. He thought of his mother’s warning against the work-jobbers; alone, without a torc, he had no identity, he had claims to no one’s protection and whoever so chose could do as they liked with him. The work-jobbers would clamp a torc and an indenture upon him, ship him off to a balloon-gang. In the morning he would contrive a torc of withe or bark or leather, which would help him evade attention.

  The time was late and the night was still. So still that as he sat quietly he thought to hear coming down from the Wildlands a far faint howling. Etzwane huddled down upon the stone, feeling clammy and cool. The ahulphs were at one of their macabre revelries, which came on them like a madness; in some remote valley of the Hwan they danced and howled around a fire.

  The thought of ahulphs urged him to his feet. When sure of a trail they moved swiftly; he was not yet beyond their reach.

  He found that his legs had become stiff and his feet ached. He should never have seated himself to rest. As fast as he was able he limped on down the road into Seamus.

  An hour before dawn he passed a village: a dozen cottages around a small neat square paved with slabs of slate. To the rear stood silos, a warehouse and the bulbous tanks of a small brewery. A three-story building beside the road was evidently an inn. Folk were already astir in the cook-shed to the rear; Etzwane saw the blink of a fire. Beside the inn waited three large vans, loaded with fresh white butts and tubs of Shimrod Forest larch, destined for one or another of the distilleries. From the stable behind the inn a groom was bringing draft animals: bullocks derived from terrestrial beef-stock, placid and dependable but slow.* Etzwane dodged past, hoping not to be seen in the pre-dawn murk.

  * The fragmentation of Shant into cantons can be attributed both to the quality of the original settlers and the lack of metal for efficient engines.

  The road ahead crossed a flat waste strewn with rocks. No shelter was visible, nor any plantation from which he might have gleaned a bite or two of nourishment. His spirits dropped to their lowest ebb; he felt as if he could walk no more; his throat was parched and his stomach ached with hunger. Only fear of the ahulphs restrained him from seeking a hidden spot among the rocks in which to make himself a bed of dry leaves. Finally fatigue overcame the fear. He could walk no longer. He stumbled to a spot behind a ledge of rotten shale and wrapping himself in his robe lay down to rest. He lapsed into a numb daze, something other than sleep.

  A grating, grumbling, sound aroused him: the passage of the vans. The suns were an hour into the sky; though he had not slept, or thought he had not slept, daylight had come without his notice.

  The vans passed by and rumbled away into the west. Etzwane jumped up to look after them, thinking that here was opportunity to confuse the ahulphs. The teamsters rode on the forward benches and could not see to the rear. Etzwane ran to catch up. He swung himself aboard the last van and sat with his feet hanging over the bed. After a few moments he drew himself further back, into a convenient crevice. He intended to ride only a mile or two, then jump down, but so convenient and comfortable was his seat, so restful and secure seemed the dark nook, that he became drowsy and fell asleep.

  Etzwane awoke, to blink out from his cranny at a pair of unrecognizable rectangles, one impinged on the other. The first blazed lavender-white; the second was a panel of striated dark green. Etzwane’s mind moved sluggishly. What was this odd scene? He crawled slowly to
the back of the van, mind still fuzzy. The white was the wall of a white-washed building in the full glare of noon sunlight. The dark green panel was the side of a van thrust across his field of vision. Etzwane remembered where he was. He had been asleep; the cessation of motion had wakened him. How far had he come? Probably to Carbade, in Seamus. Not the best place to be, if the oddments of information he had picked up along Rhododendron Way were to be believed. The folk of Seamus reputedly gave nothing and took whatever might be had. Etzwane climbed stiffly from the van. Best to be on his way, before he was discovered. No more fear of the ahulphs, at any rate …

  From not too far away came the sound of voices. Etzwane slipped around the van, to confront a black-bearded man with hollow white cheeks and round blue eyes. He wore a teamster’s black canvas trousers, a dirty white vest with wooden buttons; he stood with legs apart, hands held up in surprise. He seemed pleased, rather than angry … “And what have we here, in this young bandit? So this is how they train them, to raid the cargo hardly before the wheels come to a stop. And not even a torc around his neck.”

  Etzwane spoke in a tremulous voice which he tried to hold grave and earnest. “I stole nothing, sir; I rode only a short way in the van.”

  “That’s theft of transportation,” declared the teamster. “You admit the fact yourself. Well then, come along.”

  Etzwane shrank back. “Come along where?”

  “Where you’ll learn a useful trade. I’m doing you a favor.”

  “I have a trade!” cried Etzwane. “I’m a musician! See! Here is my khitan!”

  “You’re nothing without your torc. Come along.”

  Etzwane tried to dodge away; the teamster caught him by the gown. Etzwane kicked and struggled; the teamster cuffed him, then held him off. “Do you want worse? Mind your manners!” He pulled at the khitan; the instrument fell to the ground, where the neck snapped away from the box.

  Etzwane gave a stifled cry and stared down at the tangle of wood and string. The teamster seized his arm and marched him into the depot, to a table where four men sat at a gaming board. Three were teamsters; the fourth was a Seam, the conical straw hat pushed up from his round red face.

  “A vagabond in my van,” said Etzwane’s captor. “Looks to be bright and lively; no torc, notice; what should I do to help him?”

  The four gave Etzwane a silent inspection.

  One of the teamsters grunted and turned back to the dice. “Let the lad go his way. He doesn’t want your help.”

  “Ah, but you’re wrong! Every citizen of the realm must toil; ask the job-broker here. What do you say, job-broker?”

  The Seam leaned back in his chair, pushed his hat back at a precarious angle. “He’s undersized; he looks unruly. Still, I suppose I can get him a post, perhaps up at Angwin. Twenty florins?”

  “For the sake of quick business — done.”

  The Seam rose ponderously to his feet. He signaled to Etzwane. “Come along.”

  Etzwane was confined in a closet for the better part of a day, then marched to a wagon and conveyed a mile south of Carbade, to the balloon-way depot. Half an hour later the south-bound balloon Misran appeared, wind on a broad reach, the dolly singing up the slot. Observing the semaphore, the wind-tender eased his forward cables, allowing the Misran to fall broadside to the wind and lose way. A quarter mile down the slot from the depot the tackle-man hooked a drag to the dolly, brought it to a halt, pinned the after trucks with an anchor-bolt. The spreader-bar was detached; the balloon-guys were slipped into snatch-blocks on the front trucks; now the Judas-dolly was hauled south along the slot, pulling the balloon to the ground.

  Etzwane was taken to the gondola and put into the charge of the wind-tender. The Judas-dolly was rolled back along the track and engaged with the spreader-bar, the balloon rising once more to its running altitude. The anchor-pin was removed from the after trucks. Front trucks, thirty-foot spreader-bar, after trucks constituted the working-dolly; the Misran once more rode free. The wind-tender winched in the forward guys, warping the balloon across the wind; off and away up the slot sang the dolly, gathering speed, and Carbade was left behind.*

  * The typical balloon, carrying four to eight passengers and a wind-tender, was a semi-flexible slab one unit of dimension wide, eight units long, four units high. The skeleton might be bamboo, tempered glass tubing, or rods of cemented glass fiber. The membrane was the dorsal skin of a gigantic coelenterate, nurtured and forced until it completely filled a large shallow tank, whereupon the skin was lifted and cured. Hydrogen provided buoyancy.

  The slots in which the dollies ran were pre-cast members of concrete reinforced with glass fiber, attached to foundation-sleepers. The usual dolly consisted of two sets of trucks, separated by a truss thirty feet long, at the ends of which the guys were attached. The wind-tender used trimming winches to shorten or lengthen bow and stern lines, thus controlling wind-aspect, and the canting winch, to alter the shape of the bridles at bow and stern and thus control the angle of heel.

  Under optimum circumstances velocity reached sixty or seventy miles an hour. The routes made purposeful use of prevailing winds; where the route consistently encountered adverse winds or calm, motive power was applied to the dollies at ground level, by an endless cable driven by water-wheels, or a work-gang at a windlass; by a gravity-cart loaded with stone; by teams of pacers. Balloons passed each other at sidings, or traded dollies.

  Where the route crossed gorges, as at Angwin Junction, or met otherwise unfavorable terrain, a cable of iron-web strands formed a link in the slot.

  For Etzwane, the world of his day-dreams was gone and lost, irrevocably as last year’s flowers. He knew something of the balloon-way work-gangs; their lots were drudgery and compulsion. Technically free men, in practice they were seldom able to pay off their indentures. The condition of Etzwane was even worse; without a torc he had no status; he could appeal to no one; the work-master could set any value he chose on Etzwane’s indenture. Once clamped with a torc, the Faceless Man would enforce the terms of his contract. Foreboding lay like a stone in his stomach; he felt numb and confused … Deep inside his mind a voice began to yell. He would run away. He had escaped the Chilites; he would evade the work-gang. What had his mother told him? “Defeat adversities rather than accept them.” Never would he let himself be victimized; after they clamped on his torc he would win his way to Garwiy and there make a case to the Faceless Man: both for himself and his mother. He would ask a terrible punishment for the teamster who broke his khitan; he had neglected to notice the teamster’s torc but never would he forget the pale, black-bearded face!

  Stimulated by his hate and his resolve, he began to take an interest in the balloon and the landscape: low rolling hills rippling with ripe barley, cylindrical stone farm-places, round grain towers, and, at intervals, the breweries, with their curious bulging tanks.

  During the middle afternoon the wind shifted forward; the wind-tender winched in his forward guy, to close-haul the balloon; driven closer to the ground, he canted the bridles to provide lift, to raise the Misran into a clear stream of air.

  The rolling barley fields gave way to rocky hills splotched with thickets of blue and dark orange fester-shrub, from which the ancient ahulphs had cut their weapons. To the south rose the Hwan, the great central spine of Shant, across which ran the Great Transverse Route. Late in the afternoon the Misran rushed up the last steep ten miles of slot and reached Angwin North Station, where a work-gang shifted the guys to a shackle on a mile-long endless cable suspended across a gorge. The work-gang turned a windlass, the Misran was guided sedately up to Angwin Junction, where the North Spur joined the Great Transverse Route. The guys were shifted to another endless loop, reaching across an even more stupendous gorge to Angwin proper, and here the Misran descended. The wind-tender took Etzwane to the Angwin superintendent, who at first grumbled. “What kind of whiffets and sad bantlings are they sending me now? Where can I use him? He lacks weight to push a windlass; also I don’t like th
e look in his eye.”

  The wind-tender shrugged and glanced down at Etzwane. “He’s a bit under the usual standard, but that’s no business of mine. If you don’t want him I’ll take him back down to Pertzel.”

  “Hmmf. Not so fast. What’s his price?”

  “Pertzel wants two hundred.”

  “For a creature like that? I’ll give a hundred.”

  “That’s not my instructions.”

  “Instructions be damned. Pertzel’s using us both for fools. Leave the creature here. If Pertzel won’t take a hundred, pick him up on your next trip. Meanwhile I’ll hold off his torc.”

  “A hundred is cheap. He’ll grow; he’s nimble; he can switch as many shackles as can a man.”

  “This I realize. He’ll go across to Junction and I’ll bring the top man over here for the windlass.”

  The wind-tender laughed. “So you’re getting a windlass-man for the price of a hundred-florin boy?”

  The superintendent grinned. “Don’t tell Pertzel that.”

  “Not I. It’s between the two of you.”

  “Good. Ride him back to Junction; I’ll flash over a message.” He frowned down at Etzwane. “What’s expected of you, boy, is brisk accurate work. Do your stint and the balloon-way is not so bad. If you shirk or perform, you’ll find me harsh as hackle-bush …”

  Etzwane rode back across the gorge to Angwin Junction. The Misran was hauled down by a hand-winch, a blond stocky youth not much older than Etzwane turning the crank.

  Etzwane was put down; the Misran rose once more into the gathering dusk, and was hauled down over the gorge to North Station, on the North Spur.