The Best of Jack Vance (1976) SSC

by Jack Vance

  Alan Robertson had proposed another specialized world, to be known as Tutelar, where the children of all the settled worlds should receive their education in a vast array of pedagogical facilities. To his hurt surprise, he encountered a storm of wrathful opposition from parents. His scheme was termed mechanistic, vast, dehumanizing, repulsive. What better world for schooling than old Earth itself? Here was the source of all tradition; let Earth become Tutelar! So insisted the parents, and Alan Robertson had no choice but to agree.

  In the office Duray identified himself to the clerk and requested the presence of his daughter Dolly.

  The clerk sent forth a messenger who, after an interval, returned alone. “Dolly Duray isn’t at school.”

  Duray was surprised; Dolly had been in good health and had set off to school as usual. Me said, “Either Joan or Ellen will do as well.” The messenger again went forth and again returned. “Neither one is in their classrooms, Mr. Duray. All three of your children are absent.”

  “I can’t understand it,” said Duray, now fretful. “All three set off to school this morning.”

  “Let me ask Miss Haig. I’ve just come on duty.” The clerk spoke into a telephone, listened, then turned back to Duray. “The girls went home at ten o’clock. Mrs. Duray called for them and took them back through the passway.”

  “Did she give any reason whatever?”

  “Miss Haig says no; Mrs. Duray just told her she needed the girls at home.”

  Duray stifled a sigh of baffled irritation. “Could you take me to their locker? I’ll use their passway to get home.”

  “That’s contrary to school regulations, Mr. Duray. You’ll understand, I’m sure.”

  “I can identify myself quite definitely,” said Duray. “Mr. Carr knows me well. As a matter of fact, my passway collapsed, and I came here to get home.”

  “Why don’t you speak to Mr. Carr?”

  “I’d like to do so.”

  Duray was conducted into the principal’s office, where he explained his predicament. Mr. Carr expressed sympathy and made no difficultly about taking Duray to the children’s passway.

  They went to a hall at the back of the school and found the locker numbered 382. “Here we are,” said Carr. “I’m afraid that you’ll find it a tight fit.” He unlocked the metal door with his master key and threw it open.

  Duray looked inside and saw only the black metal at the back of the locker.

  The passway, like his own, had been closed.

  Duray drew back and for a moment could find no words.

  Carr spoke in a voice of polite amazement. “How very perplexing! I don’t believe I’ve ever seen anything like it before! Surely the girls wouldn’t play such a silly prank!”

  “They know better than to touch the passway,” Duray said gruffly. “Are you sure that this is the right locker?”

  Carr indicated the card on the outside of the locker, where three names had been typed: “DOROTHY DURAY, JOAN DURAY, ELLEN

  DURAY.”

  “No mistake,” said Carr, “and I’m afraid that I can’t help you any further. Are you in common residency?”

  “It’s our private homestead.”

  Carr nodded with lips judiciously pursed, to suggest that insistence upon so much privacy seemed eccentric. He gave a deprecatory little chuckle. “I suppose if you isolate yourself to such an extent, you more or less must expect a series of emergencies.”

  “To the contrary,” Duray said crisply. “Our life is uneventful, because there’s no one to bother us. We love the wild animals, the quiet, the fresh air. We wouldn’t have it any differently.”

  Carr smiled a dry smile. “Mr. Robertson has certainly altered the lives of us all. I understand that he is your grandfather?”

  “I was raised in his household. I’m his nephew’s foster son. The blood relationship isn’t all that close.”

  • • •

  III

  From Memoirs and Reflections:

  I early became interested in magnetic fluxes and their control. After taking my degree, I worked exclusively in this field, studying all varieties of magnetic envelopes and developing controls over their formation. For many years my horizons were thus limited, and I lived a placid existence.

  Two contemporary developments forced me down from my “ivory castle.” First: the fearful overcrowding of the planet and the prospect of worse to come. Cancer already was an affliction of the past: heart diseases were under control: I feared that in another ten years immortality might be a practical reality for many of us, with a consequent augmentation of population pressure.

  Secondly, the theoretical work done upon “black holes” and “white holes” suggested that matter compacted in a “black hole” broke through a barrier to spew forth from a “white hole” in another universe. Icalculated pressures and considered the self-focusing magnetic sheaths, cones, and whorls with which I was experimenting. Through their innate properties these entities constricted themselves to apexes of a cross section indistinguishable from a geometric point. What if two or more cones (I asked myself) could be arranged in contraposition to produce an equilibrium? In this condition charged particles must be accelerated to near light-speed and at the mutual focus constricted and impinged together. The pressures thus created, though of small scale, would be far in excess of those characteristic of the “black holes”: to unknown effect.

  I can now report that the mathematics of the multiple focus are a most improbable thicket, and the useful service I enforced upon what I must call a set of absurd contradictions is one of my secrets. I know that thousands of scientists, at home and abroad, are attempting to duplicate my work: they are welcome to the effort. None will succeed. Why do I speak so positively? This is my other secret.

  • • •

  Duray marched back to the Montclair West depot in a state of angry puzzlement. There were four passways to Home, of which two were closed.

  The third was located in his San Francisco locker: the “front door,” so to speak. The last and the original orifice was cased, filed, and indexed in Alan Robertson’s vault. Duray tried to deal with the problem in rational terms. The girls would never tamper with the passways. As for Elizabeth, no more than the girls would she consider such an act. At least Duray could imagine no reason that would so urge or impel her. Elizabeth, like himself, a foster child, was a beautiful, passionate woman, tall, dark-haired, with lustrous dark eyes and a wide mouth that tended to curve in an endearingly crooked grin. She was also responsible, loyal, careful, industrious; she loved her family and Riverview Manor. The theory of erotic intrigue seemed to Duray as incredible as the fact of the closed passways. Though for a fact, Elizabeth was prone to wayward and incomprehensible moods.

  Suppose Elizabeth had received a visitor who for some sane or insane purpose had forced her to close the passway?… Duray shook his head in frustration, like a harassed bull. The matter no doubt had some simple cause. Or on the other hand, Duray reflected, the cause might be complex and intricate. The thought, by some obscure connection, brought before him the image of his nominal foster father, Alan Robertson’s nephew, Bob Robertson. Duray gave his head a nod of gloomy asseveration, as if to confirm a fact he long ago should have suspected. He went to the phone booth and called Bob Robertson’s apartment in San Francisco. The screen glowed white and an instant later displayed Bob Robertson’s alert, clean, and handsome face. “Good afternoon, Gil. Glad you called; I’ve been anxious to get in touch with you.”

  Duray became warier than ever. “How so?”

  “Nothing serious, or so I hope. I dropped by your locker to leave off some books that I promised Elizabeth, and I noticed through the glass that your passway is closed. Collapsed. Useless.”

  “Strange,” said Duray. “Very strange indeed. I can’t understand it. Can you?”

  “No… not really.”

  Duray thought he detected a subtlety of intonation. His eyes narrowed in concentration. “The passway at my rig was closed. The
passway at the girls’ school was closed. Now you tell me that the downtown passway is closed.”

  Bob Robertson grinned. “That’s a pretty broad hint, I would say. Did you and Elizabeth have a row?”

  “No.”

  Bob Robertson rubbed his long aristocratic chin. “A mystery. There’s probably some very ordinary explanation.”

  “Or some very extraordinary explanation.”

  “True. Nowadays a person can’t rule out anything. By the way, tomorrow night is the Rumfuddle. and I expect both you and Elizabeth to be on hand.”

  “As I recall,” said Duray, “I’ve already declined the invitation.” The Rumfuddlers were a group of Bob’s cronies. Duray suspected that their activities were not altogether wholesome. “Excuse me; I’ve got to find an open passway, or Elizabeth and the kids are marooned.”

  “Try Alan,” said Bob. “He’ll have the original in his vault.” Duray gave a curt nod. “I don’t like to bother him, but that’s my last hope.”

  “Let me know what happens,” said Bob Robertson. “And if you’re at loose ends, don’t forget the Rumfuddle tomorrow night. I mentioned the matter to Elizabeth, and she said she’d be sure to attend.”

  “Indeed. And when did you consult Elizabeth?”

  “A day or so ago. Don’t look so damnably gothic, my boy.”

  “I’m wondering if there’s a connection between your invitation and the closed passways. I happen to know that Elizabeth doesn’t care for your parties.”

  Bob Robertson laughed with easy good grace. “Reflect a moment.

  Two events occur. I invite you and wife Elizabeth to the Rumfuddle. This is event one. Your passways close up, which is event two. By a feat of structured absurdity you equate the two and blame me. Now is that fair?”

  “You call it ‘structured absurdity,’ “ said Duray. “I call it instinct.” Bob Robertson laughed again. “You’ll have to do better than that.

  Consult Alan, and if for some reason he can’t help you, come to the Rumfuddle. We’ll rack our brains and either solve your problem or come up with new and better ones.” He gave a cheery nod, and before Duray could roar an angry expostulation, the screen faded.

  Duray stood glowering at the screen, convinced that Bob Robertson knew much more about the closed passways than he admitted. Duray went to sit on a bench… If Elizabeth had closed him away from Home, her reasons must have been compelling indeed. But unless she intended to isolate herself permanently from Earth, she would leave at least one passway ajar, and this must be the master orifice in Alan Robertson’s vault.

  Duray rose to his feet, somewhat heavily, and stood a moment, head bent and shoulders hunched. He gave a surly grunt and returned to the phone booth, where he called a number known to not more than a dozen persons.

  The screen glowed white while the person at the other end of the line scrutinized his face… The screen cleared, revealing a round pale face from which pale blue eyes stared forth with a passionless intensity. “Hello, Ernest,” said Duray. “Is Alan busy at the moment?”

  “I don’t think he’s doing anything particular - except resting.” Ernest gave the last two words a meaningful emphasis. “I’ve got some problems,” said Duray. “What’s the best way to get in touch with him?”

  “You’d better come up here. The code is changed. It’s MHF now.”

  “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  Back in the “California” hub on Utilis, Duray went into a side chamber lined with private lockers, numbered and variously marked with symbols, names, colored flags, or not marked at all. Duray went to Locker 122, and, ignoring the keyhole, set the code lock to the letters MHF. The door opened; Duray stepped into the locker and through the passway to the High Sierra headquarters of Alan Robertson.

  • • •

  IV

  From Memoirs and Reflections:

  If one basic axiom controls the cosmos, it must be this: In a situation of infinity every possible condition occurs, not once, but an infinite number of times.

  There is no mathematical nor logical limit to the number of dimensions. Our perceptions assure us of three only, but many indications suggest otherwise: parapsychic occurrences of a hundred varieties, the

  “white holes,” the seemingly finite state of our own universe, which, by corollary, asserts the existence of others.

  Hence, when I stepped behind the lead slab and first touched the button. I felt confident of success; failure would have surprised me!

  But (and here lay my misgivings) what sort of success might I achieve?

  Suppose I opened a hole into the interplanetary vacuum?

  The chances of this were very good indeed; I surrounded the machine in a strong membrane to prevent the air of Earth from rushing off into the void.

  Suppose I discovered a condition totally beyond imagination?

  My imagination yielded no safeguards.

  I proceeded to press the button.

  • • •

  Duray stepped out into a grotto under damp granite walls. Sunlight poured into the opening from a dark-blue sky. This was Alan Robertson’s link to the outside world; like many other persons, he disliked a passway opening directly into his home. A path led fifty yards across bare granite mountainside to the lodge. To the west spread a great vista of diminishing ridges, valleys, and hazy blue air; to the east rose a pair of granite crags, with snow caught in the saddle between. Alan Robertson’s lodge was built just below the timberline, beside a small lake fringed with tall dark firs. The lodge was built of rounded granite stones, with a wooden porch across the front; at each end rose a massive chimney.

  Duray had visited the lodge on many occasions; as a boy he had scaled both of the crags behind the house, to look wonderingly off across the stillness, which on old Earth had a poignant breathing quality different from the uninhabited solitudes of worlds such as Home.

  Ernest came to the door: a middle-aged man with an ingenuous face, small white hands, and soft, damp, mouse-colored hair. Ernest disliked the lodge, the wilderness, and solitude in general; he nevertheless would have suffered tortures before relinquishing his post as subaltern to Alan Robertson. Ernest and Duray were almost antipodal in outlook. Ernest thought Duray brusque, indelicate, a trifle coarse, and probably not disinclined to violence as an argumentative adjunct. Duray considered Ernest, when he thought of him at all, as the kind of man who takes two bites out of a cherry. Ernest had never married; he showed no interest in women, and Duray, as a boy, had often fretted at Ernest’s overcautious restrictions.

  In particular Ernest resented Duray’s free and easy access to Alan Robertson. The power to restrict or admit those countless persons who demanded Alan Robertson’s attention was Ernest’s most cherished perquisite, and Duray denied him the use of it by simply ignoring Ernest and all his regulations. Ernest had never complained to Alan Robertson for fear of discovering that Duray’s influence exceeded his own. A wary truce existed between the two, each conceding the other his privileges.

  Ernest performed a polite greeting and admitted Duray into the lodge.

  Duray looked around the interior, which had not changed during his lifetime: varnished plank floors with red, black, and white Navaho rugs, massive pine furniture with leather cushions, a few? shelves of books, a half-dozen pewter mugs on the mantle over the big fireplace-a room almost ostentatiously bare of souvenirs and mementos. Duray turned back to Ernest: “Whereabouts is Alan?”

  “On his boat.”

  “With guests?”

  “No,” said Ernest, with a faint sniff of disapproval. “He’s alone, quite alone.”

  “How long has he been gone?”

  “He just went through an hour ago. I doubt if he’s left the dock yet.

  What is your problem, if I may ask?”

  “The passways to my world are closed. All three. There’s only one left, in the vault.”

  Ernest arched his flexible eyebrows. “Who closed them?”

  “I don’t know. Eliz
abeth and the girls are alone, so far as I know.”

  “Extraordinary,” said Ernest in a flat metallic voice. “Well, then, come along.” He led the way down a hall to a back room. With his hand on the knob, Ernest paused and looked back over his shoulder. “Did you mention the matter to anyone? Robert, for instance?”