The Best of Jack Vance (1976) SSC

by Jack Vance

  After a fashion, it was a beautiful room, imbued with an atmosphere of erudition in its dark wood-tones. The far wall glowed molten with rich color—a rose window from the old Chartres cathedral, in full effulgence under the glare of free-space sunlight.

  “Too bad Earl ran out of outside wall,” said Jean. “A collection of stained glass windows runs into a lot of wall-space, and one is hardly a collection…Perhaps there’s another room…” For the study, large as it was, apparently occupied only half the space permitted by the dimensions of Earl’s suite. “But—for the moment—I’ve got enough here to look at.”

  Racks, cases, files, walnut-and-leaded-glass cabinets surfaced the walls; glass-topped displays occupied the floor. To her left was a battery of tanks. In the first series swam eels, hundreds of eels: Earth eels, eels from the outer worlds. She opened a cabinet. Chinese coins hung on pegs, each documented with crabbed boyish handwriting.

  She circled the room, marveling at the profusion.

  There were rock crystals from forty-two separate planets, all of which appeared identical to Jean’s unpracticed eye.

  There were papyrus scrolls, Mayan codices, medieval parchments illuminated with gold and Tyrian purple, Ogham runes on moldering sheepskin, clay cylinders incised with cuneiform.

  Intricate wood carvings—fancy chains, cages within cages, amazing interlocking spheres, seven vested Brahmin temples.

  Centimeter cubes containing samples of every known element. Thousands of postage stamps, mounted on leaves, swung out of a circular cabinet.

  There were volumes of autographs of famous criminals, together with their photographs and Bertillon and Pevetsky measurements. From one corner came the rich aromas of perfumes—a thousand little flagons minutely described and coded, together with the index and code explanation, and these again had their origin on a multitude of worlds. There were specimens of fungus growths from all over the universe, and there were racks of miniature phonograph records, an inch across, microformed from the original pressings.

  She found photographs of Earl’s everyday life, together with his weight, height and girth measurement in crabbed handwriting, and each picture bore a colored star, a colored square and either a red or blue disk. By this time Jean knew the flavor of Earl’s personality. Near at hand there would be an index and explanation. She found it, near the camera which took the pictures. The disks referred to bodily functions; the stars, by a complicated system she could not quite comprehend, described Earl’s morale, his frame of mind. The colored squares recorded his love life. Jean’s mouth twisted in a wry grin. She wandered aimlessly on, fingering the physiographic globes of a hundred planets and examining maps and charts.

  The cruder aspects of Earl’s personality were represented in a collection of pornographic photographs, and near at hand an easel and canvas where Earl was composing a lewd study of his own. Jean pursed her mouth primly. The prospect of marrying Earl was becoming infinitely less enchanting.

  She found an alcove filled with little chessboards, each set up in a game. A numbered card and record of moves was attached to each board. Jean picked up the inevitable index book and glanced through. Earl played postcard chess with opponents all over the universe. She found his record of wins and losses. He was slightly but not markedly a winner. One man, William Angelo of Toronto, beat him consistently. Jean memorized the address, reflecting that if Earl ever took up her challenge to play chess, now she knew how to beat him. She would embroil Angelo in a game, and send Earl’s moves to Angelo as her own and play Angelo’s return moves against Earl. It would be somewhat circuitous and tedious, but foolproof—almost.

  She continued her tour of the study. Seashells, moths, dragonflies, fossil trilobites, opals, torture implements, shrunken human heads. If the collection represented bona fide learning, thought Jean, it would have taxed the time and ability of any four Earth geniuses. But the hoard was essentially mindless and mechanical, nothing more than a boy’s collection of college pennants or signs or match-box covers on a vaster scale.

  One of the walls opened out into an ell, and here was communication via a freight hatch to outside space. Unopened boxes, crates, cases, bundles—apparently material as yet to be filed in Earl’s rookery—filled the room. At the corner another grotesque and monumental creature hung poised, as if to clutch at her, and Jean felt strangely hesitant to wander within its reach. This one stood about eight feet tall. It wore the shaggy coat of a bear and vaguely resembled a gorilla, although the face was long and pointed, peering out from under the fur, like that of a French poodle.

  Jean thought of Fotheringay’s reference to Earl as an “eminent zoologist.” She looked around the room. The stuffed animals, the tanks of eels, Earth tropical fish and Maniacan polywriggles were the only zoological specimens in sight. Hardly enough to qualify Earl as a zoologist. Of course, there was an annex to the room…She heard a sound. A click at the outer door.

  Jean dived behind the stuffed animal, heart thudding in her throat. With exasperation she told herself, He’s an eighteen-year-old boy…If I can’t face him down, out-argue, out-think, out-fight him, and come out on top generally, then it’s time for me to start crocheting table mats for a living. Nevertheless, she remained hidden.

  Earl stood quietly in the doorway. The door swung shut behind him. His face was flushed and damp, as if he had just recovered from anger or embarrassment. His delft-blue eyes gazed unseeingly down the roof, gradually came into focus.

  He frowned, glanced suspiciously right and left, sniffed. Jean made herself small behind the shaggy fur. Could he smell her?

  He coiled up his legs, kicked against the wall, dived directly toward her. Under the creature’s arm she saw him approaching, bigger, bigger, bigger, arms at his sides, head turned up like a diver. He thumped against the hairy chest, put his feet to the ground, stood not six feet distant.

  He was muttering under his breath. She heard him plainly. “Damnable insult…If she only knew! Hah!” He laughed a loud scornful bark. “Hah!”

  Jean relaxed with a near-audible sigh. Earl had not seen her, and did not suspect her presence.

  He whistled aimlessly between his teeth, indecisively. At last he walked to the wall, reached behind a bit of ornate fretwork. A panel swung aside, a flood of bright sunlight poured through the opening into the study.

  Earl was whistling a tuneless cadence. He entered the room but did not shut the door. Jean darted from behind her hiding place, looked in, swept the room with her eyes. Possibly she gasped.

  Earl was standing six feet away, reading from a list. He looked up suddenly, and Jean felt the brush of his eyes.

  He did not move…Had he seen her?

  For a moment he made no sound, no stir. Then he came to the door, stood staring up the study and held this position for ten or fifteen seconds. From behind the stuffed gorilla-thing Jean saw his lips move, as if he were silently calculating.

  She licked her lips, thinking of the inner room.

  He went out into the alcove, among the unopened boxes and bales. He pulled up several, floated them toward the open door, and they drifted into the flood of sunshine. He pushed other bundles aside, found what he was seeking, and sent another bundle after the rest.

  He pushed himself back to the door, where he stood suddenly tense, nose dilated, eyes keen, sharp. He sniffed the air. His eyes swung to the stuffed monster. He approached it slowly, arms hanging loose from his shoulders.

  He looked behind, expelled his breath in a long drawn hiss, grunted. From within the annex Jean thought, He can either smell me, or it’s telepathy! She had darted into the room while Earl was fumbling among the crates, and ducked under a wide divan. Flat on her stomach she watched Earl’s inspection of the stuffed animal, and her skin tingled. He smells me, he feels me, he senses me.

  Earl stood in the doorway, looking up and down the study. Then he carefully, slowly, closed the door, threw a bolt home, turned to face into the inner room.

  For five minutes he busied
himself with his crates, unbundling, arranging the contents, which seemed to be bottles of white powder, on shelves.

  Jean pushed herself clear of the floor, up against the underside of the divan and moved to a position where she could see without being seen. Now she understood why Fotheringay had spoken of Earl as an “eminent zoologist.”

  There was another word which would fit him better, an unfamiliar word which Jean could not immediately dredge out of her memory. Her vocabulary was no more extensive than any girl of her own age, but the word had made an impression.

  Teratology. That was the word. Earl was a teratologist.

  Like the objects in his other collections, the monsters were only such creatures as lent themselves to ready, almost haphazard collecting. They were displayed in glass cabinets. Panels at the back screened off the sunlight, and at absolute zero, the things would remain preserved indefinitely without taxidermy or embalming.

  They were a motley, though monstrous group. There were true human monsters, macro-and micro-cephalics, hermaphrodites, creatures with multiple limbs and with none, creatures sprouting tissues like buds on a yeast cell, twisted hoop-men, faceless things, things green, blue and gray.

  And then there were other specimens equally hideous, but possibly normal in their own environment: the miscellany of a hundred life-bearing planets.

  To Jean’s eyes, the ultimate travesty was a fat man, displayed in a place of prominence! Possibly he had gained the conspicuous position on his own merits. He was corpulent to a degree Jean had not considered possible. Beside him Webbard might show active and athletic. Take this creature to Earth, he would slump like a jellyfish. Out here on Abercrombie he floated free, bloated and puffed like the throat of a singing frog! Jean looked at his face—looked again! Tight blond curls on his head…

  Earl yawned, stretched. He proceeded to remove his clothes. Stark naked he stood in the middle of the room. He looked slowly, sleepily along the ranks of his collection.

  He made a decision, moved languidly to one of the cubicles. He pulled a switch.

  Jean heard a faint musical hum, a hissing, smelled heady ozone. A moment passed. She heard a sigh of air. The inner door of a glass cubicle opened. The creature within, moving feebly, drifted out into the room…

  Jean pressed her lips tight together; after a moment looked away.

  Marry Earl! She winced. No, Mr. Fotheringay. You marry him yourself, you’re as able as I am…Two million dollars? She shuddered. Five million sounded better. For five million she might marry him. But that’s as far as it would go. She’d put on her own ring, there’d be no kissing of the bride. She was Jean Parlier, no plaster saint. But enough was enough, and this was too much.

  VII

  Presently Earl left the room. Jean lay still, listened. No sound came from outside. She must be careful. Earl would surely kill her if he found her here. She waited five minutes. No sound, no motion reached her. Cautiously she edged herself out from under the divan.

  The sunlight burned her skin with a pleasant warmth, but she hardly felt it. Her skin seemed stained; the air seemed tainted and soiled her throat, her lungs. She wanted a bath…Five million dollars would buy lots of baths. Where was the index? Somewhere would be an index. There had to be an index…Yes. She found it, and quickly consulted the proper entry. It gave her much meat for thought.

  There was also an entry describing the revitalizing mechanism. She glanced at it hurriedly, understanding little. Such things existed, she knew. Tremendous magnetic fields streamed through the protoplasm, gripping and binding tight each individual atom, and when the object was kept at absolute zero, energy expenditure dwindled to near-nothing. Switch off the clamping field, kick the particles back into motion with a penetrating vibration, and the creature returned to life.

  She returned the index to its place, pushed herself to the door.

  No sound came from outside. Earl might be writing or coding the events of the day on his phonogram…Well, so then? She was not helpless. She opened the door, pushed boldly through.

  The study was empty!

  She dived to the outer door, listened. A faint sound of running water reached her ears. Earl was in the shower. This would be a good time to leave.

  She pressed the door-slide. The door snapped open. She stepped out into Earl’s bedroom, pushed herself across to the outer door.

  Earl came out of the bathroom, his stocky fresh-skinned torso damp with water.

  He stood stock-still, then hastily draped a towel around his middle. His face suddenly went mottled red and pink. “What are you doing in here?”

  Jean said sweetly, “I came to check on your linen, to see if you needed towels.”

  He made no answer, but stood watching her. He said harshly, “Where have you been this last hour?”

  Jean made a flippant gesture. “Here, there. Were you looking for me?”

  He took a stealthy step forward. “I’ve a good mind to—”

  “To what?” Behind her she fumbled for the door-slide.

  “To—”

  The door opened.

  “Wait,” said Earl. He pushed himself forward.

  Jean slipped out into the corridor, a foot ahead of Earl’s hands.

  “Come back in,” said Earl, making a clutch for her.

  From behind them Mrs. Blaiskell said in a horrified voice, “Well, I never! Mr. Earl!” She had appeared from Mrs. Clara’s room.

  Earl backed into his room hissing unvoiced curses. Jean looked in after him. “The next time you see me, you’ll wish you’d played chess with me.”

  “Jean!” barked Mrs. Blaiskell.

  Earl asked in a hard voice, “What do you mean?”

  Jean had no idea what she meant. Her mind raced. Better keep her ideas to herself. “I’ll tell you tomorrow morning.” She laughed mischievously. “About six or six-thirty.”

  “Miss Jean!” cried Mrs. Blaiskell angrily. “Come away from that door this instant!”

  Jean calmed herself in the servants’ refectory with a pot of tea.

  Webbard came in, fat, pompous and fussy as a hedgehog. He spied Jean and his voice rose to a reedy oboe tone. “Miss, miss!”

  Jean had a trick she knew to be effective, thrusting out her firm young chin, squinting, charging her voice with metal. “Are you looking for me?”

  Webbard said, “Yes, I certainly am. Where on earth—”

  “Well, I’ve been looking for you. Do you want to hear what I’m going to tell you in private or not?”

  Webbard blinked. “Your tone of voice is impudent, miss. If you please—”

  “Okay,” said Jean. “Right here, then. First of all, I’m quitting. I’m going back to Earth. I’m going to see—”

  Webbard held up his hand in alarm, looked around the refectory. Conversation along the tables had come to a halt. A dozen curious eyes were watching.

  “I’ll interview you in my office,” said Webbard.

  The door slid shut behind her. Webbard pressed his rotundity into a chair; magnetic strands in his trousers held him in place. “Now, what is all this? I’ll have you know there’ve been serious complaints.”

  Jean said disgustedly, “Tie a can to it, Webbard. Talk sense.”

  Webbard was thunderstruck. “You’re an impudent minx!”

  “Look. Do you want me to tell Earl how I landed the job?”

  Webbard’s face quivered. His mouth fell open; he blinked four or five times rapidly. “You wouldn’t dare to—”

  Jean said patiently, “Forget the master-slave routine for five minutes, Webbard. This is man-to-man talk.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I’ve a few questions I want to ask you.”

  “Well?”

  “Tell me about old Mr. Abercrombie, Mrs. Clara’s husband.”

  “There’s nothing to tell. Mr. Justus was a very distinguished gentleman.”

  “He and Mrs. Clara had how many children?”

  “Seven.”

  “And the oldest
inherits the Station?”

  “The oldest, always the oldest. Mr. Justus believed in firm organization. Of course the other children were guaranteed a home here at the Station, those who wished to stay.”

  “And Hugo was the oldest. How long after Mr. Justus did he die?”

  Webbard found the conversation distasteful. “This is all footling nonsense,” he growled in a deep voice.

  “How long?”

  “Two years.”

  “And what happened to him?”

  Webbard said briskly, “He had a stroke. Cardiac complaint. Now, what’s all this I hear about your quitting?”