The Pnume

by Jack Vance

  “Step into the cell. When the portal opens, follow, follow the trace, to Foreverness.”

  In a state of sick fury Reith glared at the Pnumekin. The pale face looked back with fish-like detachment. Demands, threats, rose up in Reith’s throat only to dwindle and die. Delay, any loss of time, might result in terrible consequences, the thought of which caused his stomach to jerk and quiver. He stalked into the cell.

  The portal closed. Down slid the cell, dropping at a rapid but controlled rate. A minute passed. The cell halted. A portal flew open. Reith stepped forth into black glossy darkness. From his feet a trail of luminous yellow dots wound off into the gloom. Reith looked in all directions. He listened. Nothing, no sound, no pressure of any living presence. Burdened with a sense of destiny, he set off along the trace.

  The line of luminous spots swung this way and that. Reith followed them with exactitude, fearing what might lie to either side. On one occasion he thought to hear a far hushed roar, as of air rising from some great depth.

  The dark lightened, almost imperceptibly, to a glow from some unseen source. Without warning he came to a brink; he stood at the edge of a darkling landscape, a place of objects faintly outlined in gold and silver luminosity. At his feet a flight of stone steps led down; Reith descended, step after step.

  He reached the bottom and halted in an uncontrollable pang of terror; in front of him stood a Pnume.

  Reith pulled together the elements of his will. He said in as firm a voice as he could muster: “I am Adam Reith. I have come here for the young woman, my companion, whom you took away yesterday. Bring her here immediately.”

  From the shape came the husky Pnume whisper: “You are Adam Reith?”

  “Yes. Where is the woman?”

  “You came here from Earth?”

  “What of the woman? Tell me!”

  “Why did you come to Old Tschai?”

  A roar of desperation rose in Reith’s throat. “Answer my question!”

  The dark shape slid quietly away. Reith stood a moment, undecided whether to stand or follow.

  The gold and silver luminosities seemed to become brighter; or perhaps Reith had begun to cast order upon the seemingly unrelated shapes. He began to see outlines and tracts, pagoda-like frameworks, a range of columns. Beyond appeared silhouettes with gold and silver fringes, as yet unstructured by his mind.

  The Pnume stalked slowly away. Reith’s frustration reached an intensity where he felt almost faint; then he experienced a rage which sent him bounding after the Pnume. He seized the harsh shoulder-element and jerked; to his utter astonishment the Pnume dropped as if falling over backward, the arms swinging down to serve as forelegs. It stood ventral surface upmost, head swiveling strangely down and over, so that the Pnume took on the aspect of a night-hound. While Reith gaped in awe and embarrassment the Pnume flipped itself upright, to regard Reith with chilling disfavour.

  Reith found his voice. “I must talk to responsible folk among you and quickly. What I have to say is urgent—to you and to me!”

  “This is Foreverness,” came the husky voice. “Such words have no meaning.”

  “You will think differently, when you hear me.”

  “Come to your place in Foreverness. You are awaited.” Once more the creature set off. Tears brimmed in Reith’s eyes; vast outrage rose up behind his teeth. If anything had happened to Zap 210, they would pay, how they would pay! regardless of consequence.

  For a space they walked and presently passed through a columned portal into a new underground realm: a place which Reith associated with some elegant memorial garden of old Earth.

  Away and along the gold— and silver-fringed prospect stood brooding shapes. Reith had no opportunity for speculation. Certain shapes moved forward; he saw them to be Pnume, and advanced to meet them. There were at least twenty; by their extreme diffidence and unobtrusiveness Reith understood them to be of the highest status. Facing the twenty shadows in this shadow-haunted corner of Foreverness he could not help but wonder as to the state of his mind. Was he wholly sane? In such surroundings orderly mental processes were inapplicable. By sheer brutal energy he must impose his personal will-to-order upon the devious environment of the Pnume.

  He looked around the shadowed group. “I am Adam Reith,” he said. “I am an Earthman. What do you want of me?”

  “Your presence in Foreverness.”

  “I’m here,” said Reith, “but I intend to go. I came of my own volition; are you aware of this?”

  “You would have come in any event.”

  “Wrong. I would not have come. You kidnapped my friend, a young woman. I came to fetch her away and take her back to the surface.”

  The Pnume, as if by signal, all took a simultaneous slow step forward: a sinister movement, the stuff of nightmare. “How did you expect to effect so much? This is Foreverness.”

  Reith thought for a moment. “You Pnume have lived long on Tschai.”

  “Long, long: we are the soul of Tschai. We are the world itself.”

  “Other races live on Tschai; they are people more powerful than yourselves.”

  “They come and go: colored shadows to entertain us. We expel them as we choose.”

  “You do not fear the Dirdir?”

  “They cannot reach us. They know none of our precious secrets.”

  “What if they did?”

  The dark shapes approached another slow pace.

  Reith called out in a harsh voice: “What if the Dirdir know all your secrets: all your tunnels and passages and pop-outs?”

  “A grotesque situation which can never be real.”

  “But it can be real. I can make it real.” Reith brought forth a folder bound in blue leather. “Examine this.”

  The Pnume gingerly accepted the portfolio. “It is the lost master-set!”

  “Wrong again,” said Reith. “It is a copy.”

  The Pnume set up a low whimpering sound, and Reith once again thought of the night-hounds; he had often heard just such soft calls out on the Kotan steppes.

  The sad half-whispered wails subsided. The Pnume stood in a rigid semicircle. Reith could feel their emotion; it was almost palpable, a crazy, irresponsible ferocity he heretofore had associated only with the Phung.

  “Be calm,” said Reith. “The danger is not imminent. The charts are hostage to my safety; you are secure unless I do not return to the surface. In this case the charts will be given over to the Blue Chasch and the Dirdir.”

  “Intolerable. The charts must be secured. There is no alternative.”

  “That is what I hoped you would say.” Reith looked around the half-circle. “You agree to my conditions?”

  “We have not heard them.”

  “I want the woman whom you brought down yesterday. If she is dead, I plan to exact a terrible penalty from you. You will long remember me; you will long curse the name Adam Reith.”

  The Pnume stood in silence.

  “Where is she?” demanded Reith in a rasping voice.

  “She is in Foreverness, to be crystallized.”

  “Is she alive? Or is she dead?”

  “She is not yet dead.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Across the Field of Monuments, awaiting preparation.”

  “You say that she is not yet dead—but is she alive and well?”

  “She lives.”

  “Then you are fortunate.”

  The Pnume surveyed him with incomprehension, and certain of the group gave near-human shrugs.

  Reith said: “Bring her here, or let us go to her, whichever is faster.”

  “Come.”

  They set out across the Field of Monuments: statues or simulacra representing folk of a hundred various races. Reith could not avoid pausing to stare in fascination. “Who or what are all these creatures?”

  “Episodes in the life of Tschai, which is to say, our own lives. There: the Shivvan who came to Tschai seven million years ago. This is an early crystal, one of the oldest: the m
emento of a far time. Beyond: the Gjee, who founded eight empires and were expunged by the Fesa, who in turn fled the light of the red star Hsi. Yonder: others who have dropped by along their way to oblivion.”

  Along the avenues the group moved. The monuments were black, fringed with luminous gold and silver: creatures quadruped, triped, biped; with heads, cerebral bags, nerve-nets; with eyes, optical bands, flexible sensors, prisms. Here towered a massive bulk with a heavy cranium; it brandished a seven-foot sword. The creature Reith saw to be a Green Chasch bull. Nearby a Blue Chasch chastened a group of crouching Old Chasch, while three Chaschmen glowered from the side. Beyond were Dirdir and Dirdirmen, attended by two men and two women of a race Reith failed to recognize. To the side a single Wankh, alone and austere, surveyed a gang of toiling men. Beyond these groups, except for a single empty pedestal, the avenue led away, down a black slope to a slow black river, the surface marked by drifting silver swirls. Beside the river stood a cage of silver bars; huddled in the cage was Zap 210. She watched the group approach with an impassive face. She saw Reith; her face crumpled into opposed emotions; grief and joy, relief and dismay. She had been stripped of her surface clothes; she wore only a white shift.

  Reith took pains to control his voice; still he spoke thickly. “What have you done to her?”

  “She has been treated with Liquid One. It invigorates and tones, and opens the passages for Liquid Two.”

  “Bring her forth.”

  Zap 210 emerged from the cage. Reith took her hand, stroked her head. “You are safe. We’re going back to the surface.” He stood for a few minutes quietly waiting while she wept in relief and nervous exhaustion on his shoulder.

  The Pnume came close. One said: “The return of all charts is demanded.”

  Reith managed a thick laugh. “Not yet. I have other demands to make of you—but elsewhere. Let us leave this place. Foreverness oppresses me.”

  In a hall of polished gray marble Reith faced the Pnume Elders. “I am a man; I am disturbed to see men of my own kind living the unnatural lives of Pnumekin. You must breed no more human children, and the children now underground must be transferred to the surface and there maintained until they are able to fend for themselves.”

  “But this means the end of the Pnumekin!”

  “So it does, and why not? Your race is seven million years old or more. Only in the last twenty or thirty thousand years have you had Pnumekin to serve you. Their loss will be no great hardship.”

  “If we agree—what of the charts?”

  “I will destroy all but a very few copies. None will be delivered to your enemies.”

  “This is unsatisfactory! We would then live in constant dread!”

  “I can’t worry as to this. I must retain control over you, to guarantee that my demands have been met. In due course I may return all the charts to you—sometime in the future.”

  The Pnume muttered disconsolately together a few moments. One said in a flat whisper: “Your demands will be met.”

  “In this case, conduct us back to the Sivishe salt flats.”

  At sunset the salt flats were quiet. Carina 4269 hung in a smoky haze behind the palisades, glinting upon the Dirdir towers. Reith and Zap 210 approached the old warehouse. From the office came Anacho’s spare form. He stepped forward to meet them. “The sky-car is here. There is nothing to keep us.”

  “Let’s hurry then. I can’t believe that we’re free.”

  The sky-car lifted from behind the warehouse and swept north. Anacho asked: “Where do we go?”

  “To the Kotan steppes, south of where you and I first met.”

  All night they flew, over the barren center of Kislovan, then over the First Sea and the Kotan marshlands.

  At dawn they drifted over the edge of the Steppes while Reith studied the landscape below. They crossed a forest; Reith pointed to a clearing. “There: where I came down to Tschai. The Emblem camp lay to the east. There, by that grove of feather-bush: there we buried Onmale. Drop down there.”

  The sky-car landed. Reith alighted and walked slowly toward the woods. He saw the glint of metal. Traz came forth. He stood quietly as Reith approached. “I knew that you would come.”

  Traz had changed. He had become a man: something more than a man. On his shoulder he wore a medallion of metal, stone and wood. Reith said: “You dug up the emblem.”

  “Yes. It called to me. Wherever I walked upon the steppe I heard voices, all the voices of all the Omnale chieftains, calling to be taken up from the dark. I brought forth the emblem; the voices are now silent.”

  “And the ship?”

  “It is ready. Four of the technicians are here. One stayed at Sivishe, two lost heart and set off across the steppes for Hedaijha.”

  “The sooner we depart the better. When we’re actually out in space I’ll believe that we’ve escaped.”

  “We are ready.”

  Anacho, Traz and Zap 210 entered the spaceship. Reith took a last look around the sky. He bent, touched the soil of Tschai, crumbled a handful of mold between his fingers. Then he too entered the unlovely hulk. The port was closed and sealed. The generators hummed. The ship lifted toward the sky. The face of Tschai receded; the planet exhibited rotundity, became a gray-brown ball, and presently was gone.

  Footnotes

  [1] tsau’gsh: prideful endeavor, unique enterprise, lunge toward glory. An essentially untranslatable concept.

  [2] Phung: a man-like indigene of Tschai, given to erratic and reckless behavior. Pnume: a diffident, tranquil and secretive folk, similar to the Phung but of lesser stature.

  [3] Pnumekin: men associated with the Pnume over a period of tens of thousands of years, with consequent assimilation of Pnume habits and mental processes.

  Gzindra: Pnumekin ejected from the underground world, usually for reason of “boisterous behavior”; wanderers of the surface, agents of the Pnume.

  [4] Scanscope: photo-multiplying binoculars.

  [5] Secrets: the rough translation of a phrase signifying the body of lore proper and suitable to a particular status. In the context of Pnume society the word secrets conveys more accurate overtones.

  [6] Again a rude rendering of an untranslatable idea: the title in Tschai terms connotes superlative erudition in combination with high authority and status.

  [7] Ghaun: a wild region exposed to wind and weather. In the special usage of the Pnume: the surface of Tschai, with emphasized connotations of exposure, oppressive emptiness, desolation.

  [8] Ghian: an inhabitant of the ghaun: a surface-dweller.

  [9] Zuzhma kastchai: the contraction of a phrase: the ancient and secret world-folk derived from dark rock and mother-soil.

  [10] A somewhat unwieldy translation of the contraction gol’eszitra, from a phrase meaning “supervisory intellect with ears alert for raucous disturbance.”

  [11] Shelters: an inexact rendering of a word combining concepts of ageless order, quiet and security, the complexity of a maze. “Identification,” “name,” and “type” in the language of Tschai are the same word.

  [12] Later, Reith learned more of the sacred groves, and the Khor inter-social relationships. In the towns and villages, men and women wore identical clothes; sexual activity was regarded as unnatural conduct. Only in the sacred groves, with nudity and the ritual masks to emphasize sexual disparity, did procreation occur. Men and women, in assuming the masks, assumed new personalities; children were regarded not as the issue of specific parents, but as the yield of archetypal Man and Woman.