The Pnume

by Jack Vance

  “Come now!” snapped Reith. “It’s only paper.”

  “Only paper! It crawls with secrets, Class Twenty secrets. My mind is too small!”

  Reith suspected incipient hysteria, although her voice had remained a soft monotone. “To become a Gzhindra you must reach the surface. To reach the surface we must find an exit, the more secret the better. Here we have secret charts. We are in luck.”

  She became quiet and even glanced from the corner of her eyes toward the portfolio. “How did you get this?”

  “I took it from a Pnume.” He pushed the portfolio toward her. “Can you read the symbols?”

  “I am trained to read.” Gingerly she leaned over the portfolio, to jerk instantly back in fear and revulsion.

  Reith forced himself to patience. “You have never seen a map before?”

  “I have a level of Four; I know Class Four secrets; I have seen Class Four maps. This is Class Twenty.”

  “But you can read this map.”

  “Yes.” The word came with sour distaste. “But I dare not. Only a ghian would think to examine such a powerful document ...” Her voice trailed away to a murmur. “Let alone steal it...”

  “What will the Pnume do when they find it is gone?”

  The girl looked off over the gulf. “Dark, dark, dark. I will fall forever through the dark.”

  Reith began to grow restive. The girl seemed able to concentrate only on those ideas rising from her own mind. He directed her attention to the map. “What do the colors signify?”

  “The levels and stages.”

  “And these symbols?”

  “Doors, portals, secret ways. Touch-plates. Communication stations. Rises, pop-outs, observation posts.”

  “Show me where we are now.”

  Reluctantly she focused her eyes. “Not this sheet. Turn back ... Back ... Back ... Here.”‘ She pointed, her finger a cautious two inches from the paper. “There. The black mark is the pit. The pink line is the ledge.”

  “Show me the nearest route to the surface.”

  “That would be—let me look.”

  Reith managed a distant and reflective smile: once diverted from her woes, which were real enough, Reith admitted, the girl became instantly intense, and even forgot the exposure of her face.

  “Blue-Rise pop-out is here. To get there one would go by this lateral, then up this pale orange ramp. But it is a crowded area, with administrative wickets. You would be taken and I likewise, now that I have seen the secrets.”

  The question of responsibility and guilt flickered through Reith’s mind, but he put it aside. Cataclysm had come to his life; like the plague it had infected her as well. Perhaps similar ideas circulated in her mind.

  She darted a quick sidelong glance again. “How did you come in from the ghaun?”

  “The Gzhindra let me down in a sack. I cut my way out before the Pnumekin came. I hope they decide that the Gzhindra lowered an empty sack.”

  “With one of the Great Charts missing? No person of the Shelters would touch it. The zuzhma kastchai will never rest until both you and I are dead.”

  “I become ever more anxious to escape,” said Reith.

  “I also,” remarked the girl with ingenuous simplicity. “I do not wish to fall.”

  Reith watched her a moment or two, wondering that she appeared to bear him no rancor; it was as if he had come to her as an elemental calamity—a storm, a lightning-bolt, a flood—against which resentment, argument, entreaty would have been equally useless. Already, he thought, a subtle change had come over her attitude; she bent to inspect the chart somewhat less gingerly than before. She pointed to a pale brown Y. “There’s the Palisades exit, where trading is done with the ghian. I have never been so far.”

  “Could we go up at this point?”

  “Never. The zuzhma kastchai guard against the Dirdir. There is continual vigilance.”

  Reith pointed to the other pale brown Y’s. “These are other openings to the surface?”

  “Yes. But if they believe you to be at large, they will block off here and here and here”—she pointed—”and all these openings are barred, and these in Exa section as well.”

  “Then we must go somewhere else: to other sectors.”

  The girl’s face twitched. “I know nothing of such places.”

  “Look at the map.”

  She did his bidding, running her finger close above the mesh of colored lines, but not yet daring to touch the paper itself. “I see here a secret way, Quality Eighteen. It runs from the passage out yonder to Parallel Twelve, and it shortens the way by a half. Then we might go along any of these adits to the freight docks.”

  Reith rose to his feet. He pulled the hat over his face. “Do I look like a Pnumekin?”

  She gave him a brief unsympathetic inspection. “Your face is strange. Your skin is dark from the ghaun weather. Take some dust and wipe it on your face.”

  Reith did as he was bid; the girl watched with an expressionless gaze; Reith wondered what went on in her mind. She had declared herself an outcast, a Gzhindra, without overmuch agony of the spirit. Or did she contrive a subtle betrayal? “Betrayal” was perhaps unfair, Reith reflected. She had pledged him no faith, she owed him no loyalty, indeed, something considerably the reverse. So how could he control her after they set forth through the passages? Reith pondered and studied her, while she became increasingly agitated. “Why do you look at me like that?”

  Reith held out the blue portfolio to her. “Carry this under your cloak, where it won’t be seen.”

  The girl swayed back aghast. “No.”

  “You must.”

  “I don’t dare. The zuzhma kastchai—”

  “Conceal the charts under your cloak,” said Reith in a measured voice. “I’m a desperate man, and I’ll stop at nothing to return to the surface.”

  With limp fingers she took the portfolio. Turning her back, and glancing warily over her shoulder at Reith, she tucked the portfolio out of sight under her cloak. “Come then,” she croaked. “If we are taken, it is how life must go. Never in my dreaming did I expect to be a Gzhindra.”

  She opened the portal and looked out into the round chamber. “The way is clear. Remember, walk softly, do not lean forward. We must pass through Fer junction, and there will be persons at their affairs. The zuzhma kastchai wander everywhere; if we meet one of these, halt, step into the shadows or face the wall; this is the respectful way. Do not move quickly; do not jerk your arms.”

  She stepped out into the round room and set off along the passage. Reith followed five or six paces behind, trying to simulate the Pnumekin gait. He had forced the girl to carry the charts; even so, he was at her mercy. She could run screaming to the first Pnumekin they came upon, and hope for mercy from the Pnume ... The situation was unpredictable.

  They walked half a mile, up a ramp, down another and into a main adit. At twenty-foot intervals the narrow doorways opened into the rock; beside each was a fluted pedestal with a flat polished upper surface, the function of which Reith could not calculate. The passage widened and they entered Fer Junction, a large hexagonal hall with a dozen polished marble pillars supporting the ceiling. In dim little booths around the periphery sat Pnumekin writing in ledgers, or occasionally holding vague and seemingly indecisive colloquies with other Pnumekin who had come to seek them out.

  The girl wandered to the side and halted. Reith stopped as well.

  She glanced at him, then looked thoughtfully toward a Pnumekin in the center of the room: a tall haggard man with an unusually alert posture. Reith stepped into the shadow of a pillar and watched the girl. Her face was blank as a plate but Reith knew her to be reviewing the circumstances which had overwhelmed her pale existence, and his life depended on the balance of her fears: the bottomless gulf against the windy brown skies of the surface.

  Slowly she moved toward Reith and joined him in the shadow of the pillar. For the moment at least she had made her decision.

  “The tall man yo
nder: he is a Listening Monitor.[10] Notice how he observes all? Nothing escapes him.”

  For a period Reith stood watching the Listening Monitor, becoming each minute more disinclined to cross the chamber. He muttered to the girl, “Do you know another route to the freight docks?”

  She pondered the matter. Having committed herself to flight, her personality had become somewhat more focused, as if danger had drawn her up out of the dreaming inversion of her former existence.

  “I think,” she said dubiously, “that another route passes by way of the work halls; but it is a long way and other Listening Monitors are on hand.”

  “Hmmf.” Reith turned to watch the Listening Monitor of Fer Junction.

  “Notice,” he said presently, “he turns to look this way and that. When his back is toward us, I’ll move to the next pillar, and you come after me.”

  A moment later the Monitor swung around. Reith stepped out into the chamber, sauntered to the nearest of the marble pillars. The girl came slowly after him, still somewhat indecisively, or so it seemed to Reith.

  Reith could not now peer around the pillar without the risk of attracting the Monitor’s attention. “Tell me when he looks away,” he muttered to the girl.

  “Now.”

  Reith gained the next pillar and, using a file of slow-moving Pnumekin as a screen, continued on to the next. Now a single open area remained. The Monitor swung about abruptly, and Reith ducked back behind the pillar: a deadly game of peek-a-boo. From a passage to the side a Pnume entered the chamber, coming softly on forward-padding legs.

  The girl hissed under her breath, “The Silent Critic ... take care.” she drifted away, head downcast, as if in an abstraction. The Pnume halted, not fifty feet from Reith, who turned his back. Only a few strides remained to the north of the passage. Reith’s shoulder blades twitched. He could bear to stand by the pillar no longer. Feeling every eye in the chamber pressing upon him he crossed the open area. With each step he expected a cry of outrage, an alarm. The silence became oppressive; only by great effort could he control the urge to look over his shoulder. He reached the mouth of the passage and turned a cautious glance over his shoulder—to stare full into the eye sockets of the Pnume. With pounding heart Reith turned slowly and proceeded. The girl had gone ahead. He called to her in a soft voice, “Run ahead; find the Class Eighteen passage.”

  She turned back a startled glance. “The Silent Critic is close at hand. I may not run; if he saw he would think it boisterous conduct.”

  “Never mind the decorum,” said Reith. “Find the opening as fast as possible.”

  She quickened her step, with Reith coming behind. After fifty yards he risked a glance to the rear. No one followed.

  The corridor branched; the girl stopped short. “I think we go to the left, but I am not sure.”

  “Look at the chart.”

  With vast distaste, she turned her back and brought the portfolio from under her cloak. She could not bring herself to handle it and gave it to Reith as if it were hot. He turned the pages till she said, “Stop.” While she studied the colored lines, Reith kept his gaze to the rear. Far back, where the passage met Fer junction, a dark shape appeared in the opening. Reith, every nerve jerking, willed the girl to haste.

  “To the left, then at Mark Two-one-two, a blue tile. Style Twenty-four—I must consult the legend. Here it is: four press points. Three-one-four-two.”

  “Hurry,” Reith said, through gritted teeth.

  She turned a startled look back down the passage. “Zuzhma kastchai!”

  Reith also looked back, trying to simulate the Pnumekin gait. The Pnume padded slowly forward, but with no particular sense of purpose, or so it seemed to Reith. He moved off along the passage and overtook the girl. As she walked she counted the number marks at the base of the wall: “Seventy-five ... eighty ... eighty-five ...” Reith looked back. There were now two black shapes in the corridor; from somewhere a second Pnume had appeared. “One hundred ninety-five ... two hundred ... two hundred and five...”

  The blue tile, filmed with an antique red-purple luster, was only a foot from the floor. The girl found press-points and touched them; the outline of a door appeared; the door slid open.

  The girl began to shake. “It is Quality Eighteen. I should not enter.”

  “The Silent Critic is following us,” said Reith.

  She gasped and stepped into the passage. It was narrow and dim and haunted by a faintly rancid odor Reith had come to associate with the Pnume.

  The door slid shut. The girl pushed up a shutter and put her eye to the lens of a peephole. “The Silent Critic is coming. It suspects boisterous conduct, and wants to issue a punishment ... No! There are two! He has summoned a Warden!” She stood rigid, eye pressed to the peephole. Reith waited on tenterhooks. “What are they doing?”

  “They look along the corridor. They wonder why we are not in view.”

  “Let’s get moving,” said Reith. “We can’t stand here waiting.„

  “The Warden will know this passage ... If they come in...”

  “Never mind that.” Reith set out along the passage and the girl came behind him. A queer sight they made, thought Reith, loping through the dark in the flapping black cloaks and low-crowned hats. The girl quickly became tired and further diminished her speed by looking over her shoulder. She gave a croak of resignation and halted. “They have entered the passage.”

  Reith looked behind. The door stood ajar. In the gap the two Pnume were silhouetted. For an instant they stood rigid, like queer black dolls, then they jerked into motion. “They see us,” said the girl, and stood with her head hanging. “It will be the pit ... Well, then, let us go to meet them in all meekness.”

  “Stand against the wall,” said Reith. “Don’t move. They must come to us. There are only two.”

  “You will be helpless.”

  Reith made no comment. He picked up a fist-size rock which had fallen from the ceiling and stood waiting.

  “You can do nothing,” moaned the girl. “Use meekness, placid conduct...”

  The Pnume came quickly by forward-kicking steps, the white undershot jaws twitching. Ten feet away they halted, to contemplate the two who stood against the wall. For a half-minute none of the group moved or made a sound. The Silent Critic slowly raised its thin arm, to point with two bony fingers. “Go back.”

  Reith made no move. The girl stood with eyes glazed and mouth sagging.

  The Pnume spoke again, in a husky fluting voice. “Go back.”

  The girl started to stumble off along the passage; Reith made no motion.

  The Pnume watched him nonplussed. They exchanged a sibilant whisper, then the Silent Critic spoke again. “Go.”

  The Warden said in an almost inaudible murmur, “You are the item which escaped delivery.”

  The Silent Critic, padding forward, reached forth its arm. Reith hurled the rock with all his strength; it struck full in the creature’s bone-white face. A crunch, and the creature tottered back to the wall, to stand jerking and raising one leg up and down in a most eccentric manner. The Warden, making a throaty gasping sound, bounded forward.

  Reith jumped back, snatched off his cloak, and in an insane flourish threw it over the Pnume’s head. For a moment the creature seemed not to notice and came forward, arms outspread; then it began to dance and stamp. Reith moved cautiously in and away, looking for an instant of advantage, and the two in their soundless gyrations performed a peculiar and grotesque ballet. While the Silent Critic watched indifferently Reith seized the Warden’s arm; it felt like an iron pipe. The other arm swung about; two harsh finger-ends tore across Reith’s face. Reith felt nothing. He heaved, swung the Warden into the wall. It rebounded and moved quickly upon Reith. Reith slapped tentatively at the long pale face; it felt cool and hard. The strength of the creature was inhuman; he must evade its grip, which put him in something of a quandary. If he struck the creature with his fists he would only break his hands.

  Step by s
tep the Warden padded forward, legs bending forward. Reith threw himself to the ground, kicked out at the creature’s feet, to topple it off balance; it fell. Reith jumped up to evade the expected attack of the Silent Critic, but it remained leaning gravely against the wall, viewing the battle with the detachment of a bystander. Reith was puzzled and distracted by its attitude; as a result the Warden seized his ankle with the toes of one foot and with an amazing extension reached the other foot toward Reith’s neck. Reith kicked the creature in the crotch; it was like kicking the crotch of a tree; Reith sprained his foot. The toes gripped his neck; Reith seized the leg, twisted, applied leverage. The Pnume was forced around on its face. Reith scrambled down upon its back. Seizing the head, he gave it a sudden terrible jerk backward. A bone or stiff membrane gave elastically, then snapped. The Warden thrashed here and there in wild palpitations. By chance it gained its feet and with its head dangling backward bounded across the tunnel. It struck the Silent Critic, who slumped to the ground. Dead? Reith’s eyes bulged. Dead.

  Reith leaned against the wall, gasping for breath. Wherever the Pnume had touched him was a bruise. Blood flowed down his face; his elbow was wrenched; his foot was sprained ... but two Pnume lay dead. A little distance away the girl crouched in a shock-induced trance. Reith stumbled forward, touched her shoulder. “I’m alive. You’re alive.”

  “Your face bleeds!”

  Reith wiped his face with the hem of his cloak. He went to look down at the corpses. Drawing back his lips, he searched the bodies, but found nothing to interest him.

  “I suppose we’d better keep on going,” said Reith.

  The girl turned and set off down the tunnel. Reith followed. The Pnume corpses remained to lie in the dimness.

  The girl’s steps began to lag. “Are you tired?” asked Reith.

  His solicitude puzzled her; she looked at him warily. “No.”

  “Well, I am. Let’s rest for a while.” He lowered himself to the floor, groaning and complaining. After a moment’s hesitation she settled herself primly across the passage. Reith studied her with perplexity. She had put the struggle with the Pnume completely out of her mind, or so it seemed. Her shadowed face was composed. Astonishing, thought Reith. Her life had come apart; her future must seem a succession of terrifying question marks; yet here she sat, her face blank as that of a marionette, with no apparent distress.