by Jack Vance
“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 18. It runs from the passage out yonder to Parallel 12, 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 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; 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 choice.
“The tall man yonder: he is a Listening Monitor*. Notice how he observes all? Nothing escapes him.”
* A somewhat unwieldy translation of the contraction gol’eszitra, from a phrase meaning ‘supervisory intellect with ears alert for raucous disturbance’.
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 18 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 212, a blue tile. Style 24 — 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: “75 … 80 … 85 …” Reith looked back. There were now two black shapes in the corridor; from somewhere a second Pnume had appeared. “195 … 200 … 210.”
The blue tile, filmed with an antique red-purple luster, was only a foo
t from the floor. The girl found press-points; she touched them; the outline of a door appeared; the door slid open.
The girl began to shake. “It is Quality 18. 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; the girl came behind him and 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 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; 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 step 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 awhile.” 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.
She spoke softly: “Why do you look at me like that?”
“I was thinking,” he said, “that, considering the circumstances, you appear remarkably unconcerned.”
She made no immediate reply. There was a heavy silence in the dim passage. Then she said, “I float upon the current of life; how should I question where it carries me? It would be impudent to think of preferences; existence, after all, is a privilege given a very few.”
Reith leaned back against the wall. “A very few? How so?”
The girl became uneasy; her white fingers twisted. “How it goes on the ghaun I don’t know; perhaps you do things differently. In the Shelters* the mother-women spawn twelve times and no more than half — sometimes less — survive …” She continued in a voice of didactic reflection: “I have heard that all the women of the ghaun are mother-women. Is this true? I can’t believe it. If each spawned twelve times, and even if six went to the pit, the ghaun would boil with living flesh. It seems unreasonable.” She added, as a possibly disconnected afterthought, “I am glad that I will never be a mother-woman.”
* Shelters: an inexact rendering of a word combining concepts of ageless order, quiet and security, the complexity of a maze.
Again Reith was puzzled. “How can you be sure? You’re young yet.”
The girl’s face twitched with what might have been embarrassment. “Can’t you see? Do I look to be a mother-woman?”
“I don’t know what your mother-women look like.”
“They bulge at the chest and hips. Aren’t ghian mothers the same? Some say the Pnume decide who will be mother-women, and take them to the crèche. There they lie in the dark and spawn.”
“Alone?”
“They and the other mo
thers.”
“What of the fathers?”
“No need for fathers. In the Shelters all is secure; protection is not needed.”
Reith began to entertain an odd suspicion. “On the surface,” he said, “affairs go somewhat differently.”
She leaned forward, and her face displayed as much animation as Reith had yet noticed. “I have always wondered about life on the ghaun. Who chooses the mother-women? Where do they spawn?”
Reith evaded the question. “It’s a complicated situation. In due course I suppose you’ll learn something about it, if you live long enough. Meanwhile, I am Adam Reith. What is your name?”
“‘Name’?* I am a female.”
* ‘Identification’ ‘name’ and ‘type’ in the language of Tschai are the same word.
“Yes, but what is your personal name?”
The girl considered. “On the invoices persons are listed by group, area and zone. My group is Zith, of Athan Area, in the Pagaz Zone; my ranking is 210.”
“Zith Athan Pagaz, 210. Zap 210. It’s not much of a name. Still, it suits you.”
At Reith’s jocularity the girl looked blank. “Tell me how the Gzhindra live.”
“I saw them standing out on the wastelands. They pumped narcotic gas into the room where I slept. I woke up in a sack. They lowered me into a shaft. That’s all I know of the Gzhindra. There must be better ways to live.”
Zap 210, as Reith now thought of her, evinced disapproval. “They are ‘persons’, after all, and not wild things.”
Reith had no comment to make. Her innocence was so vast that any information whatever could only cause her shock and confusion. “You’ll find many kinds of people on the surface.”
“It is very strange,” the girl said in a vague soft voice. “Suddenly all is changed.” She sat looking off into the darkness. “The others will wonder where I have gone. Someone will do my work.”
“What was your work?”
“I instructed children in decorum.”
“What of your spare time?”
“I grew crystals in the new East Fourth Range.”
