The Best of Jack Vance (1976) SSC

by Jack Vance

Jean pushed herself to the furry two-legged creature. Here she waited.

  Earl made some difficulty about coming through the door. Hammond manipulated his elbows; Earl belched up a hoarse screech, flung himself forward, panting like a winded chicken.

  Lionel said, “Don’t fool with Hammond, Earl. He likes hurting people.”

  The two witnesses muttered wrathfully. Lionel quelled them with a look.

  Hammond seized Earl by the seat of the pants, raised him over his head, walked with magnetic shoes gripping the deck across the cluttered floor of the study, with Earl flailing and groping helplessly.

  Jean fumbled in the fretwork over the panel into the annex. Earl screamed, “Keep your hands out of there! Oh, how you’ll pay, how you’ll pay for this, how you’ll pay!” His voice hoarsened, he broke into sobs.

  Hammond shook him, like a terrier shaking a rat.

  Earl sobbed louder.

  The sound grated on Jean’s ears. She frowned, found the button, pushed. The panel flew open.

  They all moved into the bright annex, Earl completely broken, sobbing and pleading.

  “There it is,” said Jean.

  Lionel swung his gaze along the collection of monstrosities. The out-world things, the dragons, basilisks, griffins, the armored insects, the great-eyed serpents, the tangles of muscle, the coiled creatures of fang, brain, cartilage. And then there were the human creatures, no less grotesque. Lionel’s eyes stopped at the fat man.

  He looked at Earl, who had fallen numbly silent.

  “Poor old Hugo,” said Lionel. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Earl.”

  Earl made a sighing sound.

  Lionel said, “But Hugo is dead…He’s as dead as any of the other things. Right, Earl?” He looked at Jean. “Right?”

  “I guess that’s right,” said Jean uneasily. She found no pleasure baiting Earl.

  “Of course he’s dead,” panted Earl.

  Jean went to the little key controlling the magnetic field.

  Earl screamed, “You witch! You witch!”

  Jean depressed the key. There was a musical hum, a hissing, a smell of ozone. A moment passed. There came a sigh of air. The cubicle opened with a sucking sound. Hugo drifted into the room.

  He twitched his arms, gagged and retched, made a thin crying sound in his throat.

  Lionel turned to his two witnesses. “Is this man alive?”

  They muttered excitedly, “Yes, yes!”

  Lionel turned to Hugo. “Tell them your name.”

  Hugo whispered feebly, pressed his elbows to his body, pulled up his atrophied little legs, tried to assume a fetal position.

  Lionel asked the two men, “Is this man sane?”

  They fidgeted. “That of course is hardly a matter we can determine offhand.” There was further mumbling about tests, cephalographs, reflexes.

  Lionel waited a moment. Hugo was gurgling, crying like a baby. “Well—is he sane?”

  The doctors said, “He’s suffering from severe shock. The deep-freeze classically has the effect of disturbing the synapses—”

  Lionel asked sardonically, “Is he in his right mind?”

  “Well—no.”

  Lionel nodded. “In that case—you’re looking at the new master of Abercrombie Station.”

  Earl protested, “You can’t get away with that, Lionel! He’s been insane a long time, and you’ve been off the Station!”

  Lionel grinned wolfishly. “Do you want to take the matter into Admiralty Court at Metropolis?”

  Earl fell silent. Lionel looked at the doctors, who were whispering heatedly together.

  “Talk to him,” said Lionel. “Satisfy yourself whether he’s in his right mind or not.”

  The doctors dutifully addressed Hugo, who made mewing sounds. They came to an uncomfortable but definite decision. “Clearly this man is not able to conduct his own affairs.”

  Earl pettishly wrenched himself from Hammond’s grasp. “Let go of me.”

  “Better be careful,” said Lionel. “I don’t think Hammond likes you.”

  “I don’t like Hammond,” said Earl viciously. “I don’t like anyone.” His voice dropped in pitch. “I don’t even like myself.” He stood staring into the cubicle which Hugo had vacated.

  Jean sensed a tide of recklessness rising in him. She opened her mouth to speak.

  But Earl had already started.

  Time stood still. Earl seemed to move with bewildering slowness, but the others stood as if frozen in jelly.

  Time turned on for Jean. “I’m getting out of here!” she gasped, knowing what the half-crazed Earl was about to do.

  Earl ran down the line of his monsters, magnetic shoes slapping on the deck. As he ran, he flipped switches. When he finished he stood at the far end of the room. Behind him things came to life.

  Hammond gathered himself, plunged after Jean. A black arm apparently groping at random caught hold of his leg. There was a dull cracking sound. Hammond bawled out in terror.

  Jean started through the door. She jerked back, shrieking. Facing her was the eight-foot gorilla-thing with the French poodle face. Somewhere along the line Earl had thrown a switch relieving it from magnetic catalepsy. The black eyes shone, the mouth dripped, the hands clenched and unclenched. Jean shrank back.

  There were horrible noises from behind. She heard Earl gasping in sudden fear. But she could not turn her eyes from the gorilla-thing. It drifted into the room. The black dog-eyes looked deep into Jean’s. She could not move! A great black arm, groping mindlessly, fell past Jean’s shoulder, touched the gorilla-thing.

  There was screaming bedlam. Jean pressed herself against the wall. A green flapping creature, coiling and uncoiling, twisted out into the study, smashing racks, screens, displays, sending books, minerals, papers, mechanisms, cases and cabinets floating and crashing. The gorilla-thing came after, one of its arms twisted and loose. A rolling flurry of webbed feet, scales, muscular tail and a human body followed—Hammond and a griffin from a world aptly named Pest-Hole.

  Jean darted through the door, thought to hide in the alcove. Outside, on the deck, was Earl’s spaceboat. She shoved herself across to the port.

  Behind, frantically scrambling, came one of the doctors whom Lionel had brought along for a witness.

  Jean called, “Over here, over here!”

  The doctor threw himself into the spaceboat.

  Jean crouched by the port, ready to slam it at any approach of danger…She sighed. All her hopes, plans, future had exploded. Death, debacle, catastrophe were hers instead.

  She turned to the doctor. “Where’s your partner?”

  “Dead! Oh Lord, oh Lord, what can we do?”

  Jean turned her head to look at him, lips curling in disgust. Then she saw him in a new, flattering light. A disinterested witness. He looked like money. He could testify that for at least thirty seconds Lionel had been master of Abercrombie Station. Thirty seconds was enough to transfer title to her. Whether Hugo were sane or not didn’t matter because Hugo had died thirty seconds before the metal frog with the knife-edged scissor-bill had fixed on Lionel’s throat.

  Best to make sure. “Listen,” said Jean. “This may be important. Suppose you were to testify in court. Who died first, Hugo or Lionel?”

  The doctor sat quiet a moment. “Why, Hugo! I saw his neck broken while Lionel was still alive.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Oh, yes.” He tried to pull himself together. “We must do something.”

  “Okay,” said Jean. “What shall we do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  From the study came a gurgling sound, and an instant later, a woman’s scream. “God!” said Jean. “The things have got out into the inner bedroom…What they won’t do to Abercrombie Station…” She lost control and retched against the hull of the boat.

  A brown face like a poodle dog’s, spotted red with blood, peered around the corner at them. Stealthily it pulled itself closer.

  Mesmerized, Jea
n saw that now its arm had been twisted entirely off. It darted forward. Jean fell back, slammed the port. A heavy body thudded against the metal.

  They were closed in Earl’s spaceboat. The man had fainted. Jean said, “Don’t die on me, fellow. You’re worth money…”

  Faintly through the metal came crashing and thumping. Then came the muffled spatttt of proton guns.

  The guns sounded with monotonous regularity. Spatttt… spattt…spattt…spattt…

  Then there was utter silence.

  Jean inched open the port. The alcove was empty. Across her vision drifted the broken body of the gorilla-thing.

  Jean ventured into the alcove, looked out into the study. Thirty feet distant stood Webbard, planted like a pirate captain on the bridge of his ship. His face was white and wadded; pinched lines ran from his nose around his nearly invisible mouth. He carried two big proton guns; the orifices of both were white-hot.

  He saw Jean; his eyes took on a glitter. “You! It’s you that’s caused all this, your sneaking and spying!”

  He jerked up his proton guns.

  “No!” cried Jean. “It’s not my fault!”

  Lionel’s voice came weakly. “Put down those guns, Webbard.” Clutching his throat he pushed himself into the study. “That’s the new owner,” he croaked sardonically. “You wouldn’t want to murder your boss, would you?”

  Webbard blinked in astonishment. “Mr. Lionel!”

  “Yes,” said Lionel. “Home again…And there’s quite a mess to clean up, Webbard…”

  Jean looked at the bankbook. The figures burned into the plastic, spread almost all the way across the tape.

  “Two million dollars.”

  Mycroft puffed on his pipe, looked out the window. “There’s a matter you should be considering,” he said. “That’s the investment of your money. You won’t be able to do it by yourself; other parties will insist on dealing with a responsible entity—that is to say, a trustee or a guardian.”

  “I don’t know much about these things,” said Jean. “I—rather assumed that you’d take care of them.”

  Mycroft reached over, tapped the dottle out of his pipe.

  “Don’t you want to?” asked Jean.

  Mycroft said with a compressed distant smile, “Yes, I want to…I’ll be glad to administer a two-million-dollar estate. In effect, I’ll become your legal guardian, until you’re of age. We’ll have to get a court order of appointment. The effect of the order will be to take control of the money out of your hands; we can include in the articles, however, a clause guaranteeing you the full income—which I assume is what you want. It should come to—oh, say fifty thousand a year after taxes.”

  “That suits me,” said Jean listlessly. “I’m not too interested in anything right now…There seems to be something of a letdown.”

  Mycroft nodded. “I can see how that’s possible.”

  Jean said, “I have the money. I’ve always wanted it, now I have it. And now—” She held out her hands, raised her eyebrows. “It’s just a number in a bankbook…Tomorrow morning I’ll get up and say to myself, ‘What shall I do today? Shall I buy a house? Shall I order a thousand dollars worth of clothes? Shall I start out on a two-year tour of Argo Navis?’ And the answer will come out, ‘No, the hell with it all.’ “

  “What you need,” said Mycroft, “are some friends, nice girls your own age.”

  Jean’s mouth moved in rather a sickly smile. “I’m afraid we wouldn’t have much in common…It’s probably a good idea, but—it wouldn’t work out.” She sat passively in the chair, her wide mouth drooping.

  Mycroft noticed that in repose it was a sweet generous mouth.

  She said in a low voice, “I can’t get out of my head the idea that somewhere in the universe I must have a mother and a father…”

  Mycroft rubbed his chin. “People who’d abandon a baby in a saloon aren’t worth thinking about, Jean.”

  “I know,” she said in a dismal voice. “Oh, Mr. Mycroft, I’m so damn lonely…” Jean was crying, her head buried in her arms.

  Mycroft irresolutely put his hand on her shoulder, patted awkwardly.

  After a moment she said, “You’ll think I’m an awful fool.”

  “No,” said Mycroft gruffly. “I think nothing of the kind. I wish that I…” He could not put it into words.

  She pulled herself together, rose to her feet. “Enough of this…” She turned his head up, kissed his chin. “You’re really very nice, Mr. Mycroft…But I don’t want sympathy. I hate it. I’m used to looking out for myself.”

  Mycroft returned to his seat, loaded his pipe to keep his fingers busy. Jean picked up her little handbag. “Right now I’ve got a date with a couturier named André. He’s going to dress me to an inch of my life. And then I’m going to—” She broke off. “I’d better not tell you. You’d be alarmed and shocked.”

  He cleared his throat. “I expect I would.”

  She nodded brightly. “So long.” Then she left his office.

  Mycroft cleared his throat again, hitched up his trousers, settled his jacket, returned to his work…Somehow it appeared dull, drab, gray. His head ached.

  He said, “I feel like going out and getting drunk…”

  Ten minutes passed. His door opened. Jean looked in.

  “Hello, Mr. Mycroft.”

  “Hello, Jean.”

  “I changed my mind. I thought it would be nicer if I took you out to dinner, and then maybe we could go to a show…Would you like that?”

  “Very much,” said Mycroft.

  The symbolic adjuncts used to enlarge the human personality are of course numerous. Clothes comprise a most important v category of these symbols and sometimes when people are gathered together it is amusing to examine garments, unobtrusively of course, and to reflect that each article has been selected wih solicitous care with the intention of creating some particular effect.

  Despite the symbolic power of clothes, men and women are judged, by and large, by circumstances more difficult to control: posture, accent, voice timbre, the shape and color of their bodies, and most significant of all, their faces. Voices can be modulated, diets and exercise, theoretically at least, force v the body into socially acceptable contours. What can be done to the face? Enormous effort has been expended in this direction.

  Jowls are hoisted, eyebrows attached or eliminated, noses cropped, de-hooked, dehumped. The hair is tormented into a thousand styles puffed, teased, wet, dried, hung this way or that: all to formulate a fashioner able image. Nonetheless, all pretenses are transparent; nature-fakery yields to the critical eye. No matter what our inclinations, whether or not we like our faces, we are forced to live with them, and to accept whatever favor, censure or derision we willy-nilly incur.

  Except those intricate and intelligent folk of the world Sirene, whose unorthodox social habits are considered in the following pages..

  THE MOON MOTH

  The houseboat had been built to the most exacting standards of Sirenese craftsmanship, which is to say, as close to the absolute as human eye could detect. The planking of waxy dark wood showed no joints, the fastenings were platinum rivets countersunk and polished flat. In style, the boat was massive, broad beamed, steady as the shore itself, without ponderosity or slackness of line. The bow bulged like a swan's breast, the stem rising high, then crooking forward to support an iron lantern. The doors were carved from slabs of a mottled black-green wood; the windows were many sectioned, paned with squares of mica, stained rose, blue, pale green and violet. The bow was given to service facilities and quarters for the slaves; amid-ships were a pair of sleeping cabins, a dining saloon and a parlor saloon, opening upon an observation deck at the stern.

  Such was Edwer Thissell's houseboat, but ownership brought him neither pleasure nor pride. The houseboat had become shabby. The carpeting had lost its pile; the carved screens were chipped; the iron lantern at the bow sagged with rust. Seventy years ago the first owner, on accepting the boat, had honored the builde
r and had been likewise honored; the transaction (for the process represented a great deal more than simple giving and taking) had augmented the prestige of both. That time was far gone; the houseboat now commanded no prestige whatever. Edwer Thissell, resident on Sirene only three months, recognized the lack but could do nothing about it: this particular houseboat was the best he could get.

  He sat on the rear deck practicing the ganga, a zitherlike instrument not much larger than his hand. A hundred yards inshore, surf defined a strip of white beach; beyond rose jungle, with the silhouette of craggy black hills against the sky. Mireille shone hazy and white overhead, as if through a tangle of spider web; the face of the ocean pooled and pud-dled with mother-of-pearl luster. The scene had become as familiar, though not as boring, as the ganga, at which he had worked two hours, twanging out the Sirenese scales, form-ing chords, traversing simple progressions.