The Best of Jack Vance (1976) SSC

by Jack Vance

  “Yes,” said Duray curtly, “I did. Why do you ask?” Ernest hesitated a fraction of a second. “No particular reason. Robert occasionally has a somewhat misplaced sense of humor, he and his Rumfuddlers. He spoke the word with a hiss of distaste.

  Duray said nothing of his own suspicions. Ernest opened the door; they entered a large room illuminated by a skylight. The only furnishing was a rug on the varnished floor. Into each wall opened four doors. Ernest went to one of these doors, pulled it open, and made a resigned gesture. “You’ll probably find Alan at the dock.”

  Duray looked into the interior of a rude hut with palm-frond walls, resting on a platform of poles. Through the doorway he saw a path leading under sunlit green foliage toward a strip of white beach. Surf sparkled below a layer of dark-blue ocean and a glimpse of the sky. Duray hesitated, rendered wary by the events of the morning. Anyone and everyone was suspect, even Ernest, who now gave a quiet sniff of contemptuous amusement. Through the foliage Duray glimpsed a spread of sail; he stepped through the passway.

  • • •

  V

  From Memoirs and Reflections:

  Man is a creature whose evolutionary environment has been the open air. His nerves, muscles, and senses have developed across three million years in intimate contiguity with natural earth, crude stone, livewood, wind, and rain. Now this creature is suddenly - on the geologic scale, instantaneously - shifted to an unnatural environment of metal and glass, plastic and plywood, to which his psychic substrata lack allcompatibility The wonder is not that we have so much mental instability but so little. Add to this the weird noises, electrical pleasures, bizarre colors, synthetic foods, abstract entertainments! We should congratulateourselves on our durability. I bring this matter up because, with my little device - so simple, so easy, so flexible - I have vastly augmenter the load upon our poor primeval brain, and for a fact many persons find theinstant transition from one locale to another unsettling, and even actively unpleasant.

  • • •

  Duray stood on the porch of the cabin, under a vivid green canopy of sunlit foliage. The air was soft and warm and smelled of moist vegetation. He stood listening. The mutter of the surf came to his ears and from a far distance a single birdcall.

  Duray stepped down to the ground and followed the path under tall palm trees to a riverbank. A few yards downstream, beside a rough pier of poles and planks, floated a white-and-blue ketch, sails hoisted and distended to a gentle breeze. On the deck stood Alan Robertson, on the point of casting off the mooring lines. Duray hailed him; Alan Robertson turned in surprise and vexation, which vanished when he recognized Duray.

  “Hello, Gil, glad you’re here! For a moment I thought it might be someone to bother me. Jump aboard; you’re just in time for a sail.” Duray somberly joined Alan Robertson on the boat. “I’m afraid I am here to bother you.”

  “Oh?” Alan Robertson raised his eyebrows in instant solicitude. He was a man of no great height, thin, nervously active. Wisps of rumpled white hair fell over his forehead; mild blue eyes inspected Duray with concern, all thoughts of sailing forgotten. “What in the world has happened?”

  “I wish I knew. If it were something I could handle myself. I wouldn’t bother you.”

  “Don’t worry about me; there’s all the time in the world for sailing. Now tell me what’s happened.”

  “I can’t get through to Home. All the passways are closed off. Why and how I have no idea. Elizabeth and the girls are out there alone; at least I think they’re out there.”

  Alan Robertson rubbed his chin. “What an odd business! I can certainly understand your agitation… You think Elizabeth closed the passways?”

  “It’s unreasonable - but there’s no one else.” Alan Robertson turned Duray a shrewd, kindly glance. “No little family upsets? Nothing to cause her despair and anguish?”

  “Absolutely nothing. I’ve tried to reason things out, but I draw a blank.

  I thought that maybe someone - a man had gone through to visit her and decided to take over, but if this were the case, why did she come to the school for the girls? That possibility is out. A secret love affair? Possible but so damn unlikely. Since she wants to keep me off the planet, her only motive could be to protect me or herself or the girls from danger of some sort. Again this means that another person is concerned in the matter.

  Who? How? Why? I spoke to Bob. He claims to know nothing about the situation, but he wants me to come to his damned Rumfuddle, and he hints very strongly that Elizabeth will be on hand. I can’t prove a thing against Bob, but I suspect him. He’s always had a taste for odd jokes.” Alan Robertson gave a lugubrious nod. “I won’t deny that.” He sat down in the cockpit and stared off across the water. “Bob has a complicated sense of humor, but he’d hardly close you away from your world… I hardly think that your family is in actual danger, but of course we can’t take chances. The possibility exists that Bob is not responsible, that something uglier is afoot.” He jumped to his feet. “Our obvious first step is to use the master orifice in the vault.” He looked a shade regretfully toward the ocean. “My little sail can wait… A lovely world this: not fully cognate with Earth - a cousin, so to speak. The fauna and flora are roughly contemporary except for man. The hominids have never developed.” The two men returned up the path, Alan Robertson chatting lightheartedly: “Thousands and thousands of worlds I’ve visited, and looked into even more, but do you know I’ve never hit upon a good system of classification. There are exact cognates - of course we’re never sure exactly how exact they are. These cases are relatively simple but then the problems begin… Bah! I don’t think about such things anymore. I know that when I keep all the determinates at zero, the cognates appear.

  Overintellectualizing is the bane of this and every other era. Show? me a man who deals only with abstraction, and I’ll show you the dead futile end of evolution.” Alan Robertson chuckled. “If I could control the machine tightly enough to produce real cognates, our troubles would be over… Much confusion, of course. I might step through into the cognate world immediately as a true cognate Alan Robertson steps through into our world, with net effect of zero. An amazing business, really; I never tire of it…” They returned to the transit room of the mountain lodge. Ernest appeared almost instantly. Duray suspected he had been watching through the passway.

  Alan Robertson said briskly, “We’ll be busy for an hour or two, Ernest.

  Gilbert is having difficulties, and we’ve got to set things straight.” Ernest nodded somewhat grudgingly, or so it seemed to Duray. “The progress report on the Ohio Plan has arrived. Nothing particularly urgent.”

  “Thank you, Ernest, I’ll see to it later. Come along, Gilbert; let’s get to the bottom of this affair.” They went to door No. 1 and passed through to the Utilis hub. Alan Robertson led the way to a small green door with a three-dial coded lock, which he opened with a flourish. “Very well, in we go.” He carefully locked the door behind them, and they walked the length of a short hall. “A shame that I must be so cautious,” said Alan Robertson.

  “You’d be astonished at the outrageous requests otherwise sensible people make of me. I sometimes become exasperated… Well, it’s understandable, I suppose.”

  At the end of the hall Alan Robertson worked the locking dials of a red door. “This way, Gilbert; you’ve been through before.” They stepped through a passway into a hall that opened into a circular concrete chamber fifty feet in diameter, located, so Duray knew, deep under the Mad Dog Mountains of the Mojave Desert. Eight halls extended away into the rock; each hall communicated with twelve aisles. The center of the chamber was occupied by a circular desk twenty feet in diameter; here six clerks in white smocks worked at computers and collating machines. In accordance with their instructions they gave Alan Robertson neither recognition nor greeting.

  Alan Robertson went up to the desk, at which signal the chief clerk, a solemn young man bald as an egg, came forward. “Good afternoon, sir.”

 
; “Good afternoon, Harry. Find me the index for ‘Gilbert Duray,’ on my personal list.”

  The clerk bowed smartly. He went to an instrument and ran his fingers over a bank of keys; the instrument ejected a card that Harry handed to Alan Robertson. “There you are, sir.”

  Alan Robertson showed the card to Duray, who saw the code:

  “4:8:10/6:13: 29.”

  “That’s your world,” said Alan Robertson. “We’ll soon learn how the land lies. This way, to Radiant four.” He led the way down the hall, turned into the aisle numbered “8,” and proceeded to Stack 10. “Shelf six,” said Alan Robertson. He checked the card. “Drawer thirteen… here we are.” He drew forth the drawer and ran his fingers along the tabs. “Item twenty-nine.

  This should be Home.” He brought forth a metal frame four inches square and held it up to his eyes. He frowned in disbelief. “We don’t have anything here either.” He turned to Duray a glance of dismay. “This is a serious situation!”

  “It’s no more than I expected,” said Duray tonelessly.

  “All this demands some careful thought.” Alan Robertson clicked his tongue in vexation. “Tst, tst, tst.” He examined the identification plaque at the top of the frame. “Four: eight: ten/six: thirteen: twenty-nine,” he read.

  “There seems to be no question of error.” He squinted carefully at the numbers, hesitated, then slowly replaced the frame. On second thought he took the frame forth once more. “Come along, Gilbert,” said Alan Robertson. “We’ll have a cup of coffee and think this matter out.” The two returned to the central chamber, where Alan Robertson gave the empty frame into the custody of Harry the clerk. “Check the records, if you please,” said Alan Robertson. “I want to know how many passways were pinched off the master.”

  Harry manipulated the buttons of his computer. “Three only. Mr.

  Robertson.”

  “Three passways and the master - four in all?”

  “That’s right, sir.”

  “Thank you, Harry.”

  • • •

  VI

  From Memoirs and Reflections:

  I recognized the possibility of many cruel abuses, but the good so outweighed the bad that I thrust aside all thought of secrecy and exclusivity. I consider myself not Alan Robertson but, like Prometheus, an archetype of Man, and my discovery must serve all men. But caution, caution, caution!

  I sorted out my ideas. I myself coveted the amplitude of a private, personal world: such a yearning was not ignoble, I decided. Why should not everyone have the same if he so desired, since the supply waslimitless? Think of it! The wealth and beauty of an entire world: mountains and plains, forests and flowers, ocean cliffs and crashing seas, winds and clouds- all beyond value, yet worth no more than a few seconds of effort and a few watts of energy.

  I became troubled by a new idea. Would everyone desert old Earth and leave it a vile junk-heap? I found the concepts intolerable… I exchange access to a world for three to six years of remedial toil, depending upon occupancy.

  • • •

  A lounge overlooked the central chamber. Alan Robertson gestured Duray to a seat and drew two mugs of coffee from a dispenser. Settling in a chair, he turned his eves up to the ceiling. ““We must collect our thoughts. The circumstances are somewhat unusual; still, I have lived with unusual circumstances for almost fifty years.

  “So then: the situation. We have verified that there are only four passways to Home. These four passways are closed, though we must accept Bob’s word in regard to your downtown locker. If this is truly the case, if Elizabeth and the girls are still on Home, you will never see them again.”

  “Bob is mixed up in this business. I could swear to nothing, but-” Alan Robertson held up his hand. “I will talk to Bob; this is the obvious first step.” He rose to his feet and went to the telephone in the corner of the lounge. Duray joined him. Alan spoke into the screen. “Get me Robert Robertson’s apartment in San Francisco.”

  The screen glowed white. Bob’s voice came from the speaker.

  “Sorry, I’m not at home. I have gone out to my world Fancy, and I cannot be reached. Call back in a week, unless your business is urgent, in which case call back in a month.”

  “Mmph,” said Alan Robertson, returning to his seat. “Bob is sometimes a trifle too flippant. A man with an under-extended intellect…” He drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. “Tomorrow night is his party? What does he call it? A Rumfuddle?”

  “Some such nonsense. Why does he want me? I’m a dead dog; I’d rather be home building a fence.”

  “Perhaps you had better plan to attend the party.”

  “That means, submit to his extortion.”

  “Do you want to see your wife and family again?”

  “Naturally. But whatever he has in mind won’t be for my benefit, or Elizabeth’s.”

  “You’re probably right there. I’ve heard one or two unsavory tales regarding the Rumfuddlers… The fact remains that the passways are closed. All four of them.”

  Duray’s voice became harsh. “Can’t you open a new orifice for us?” Alan Robertson gave his head a sad shake. “I can tune the machine very finely. I can code accurately for the ‘Home’ class of worlds and as closely as necessary approximate a particular world-state. But at each setting, no matter how fine the tuning, we encounter an infinite number of worlds. In practice, inaccuracies in the machine, backlash, the gross size of electrons, the very difference between one electron and another, make it difficult to tune with absolute precision. So even if we tuned exactly to the

  ‘Home’ class, the probability of opening into your particular Home is one of an infinite number: in short, negligible.”

  Duray stared off across the chamber. “Is it possible that space once entered might tend to open more easily a second time?” Alan Robertson smiled. “As to that, I can’t say. I suspect not, but I really know so little. I see no reason why it should be so.”

  “If we can open into a world precisely cognate, I can at least learn why the passways are closed.”

  Alan Robertson sat up in his chair. “Here is a valid point. Perhaps we can accomplish something in this regard.” He glanced humorously sidewise at Duray. “On the other hand - consider this situation. We create access into a ‘Home’ almost exactly cognate to your own - so nearly identical that the difference is not readily apparent. You find there an Elizabeth, a Dolly, a Joan, and an Ellen indistinguishable from your own, and a Gilbert marooned on Earth. You might even convince yourself that this is your very own Home.”

  “I’d know the difference,” said Duray shortly, but Alan Robertson seemed not to hear.

  “Think of it! An infinite number of Homes isolated from Earth, an infinite number of Elizabeths, Dollys, Joans, and Ellens marooned, an infinite number of Gilbert Durays trying to regain access… The sum effect might be a wholesale reshuffling of families, with everyone more or less good-natured about the situation. I wonder if this could be Bob’s idea of a joke to share with his Rumfuddlers.”

  Duray looked sharply at Alan Robertson, wondering whether the man was serious. “It doesn’t sound funny and I wouldn’t be very good-natured.”

  “Of course not,” said Alan Robertson hastily. “An afterthought - in rather poor taste, I’m afraid.”

  “In any event, Bob hinted that Elizabeth would be at the damned Rumfuddle. If that’s the case, she must have closed the passways from this side.”

  “A possibility,” Alan Robertson conceded, “but unreasonable. Why should she seal you away from Home?”

  “I don’t know, but I’d like to find out.”

  Alan Robertson slapped his hands down upon his shanks and jumped to his feet, only to pause once more. “You’re sure you want to look into these cognates7 You might see things you wouldn’t like.”

  “So long as I know the truth, I don’t care whether I like it or not.”

  “So be it.”

  • • •

  The machine occupied a
room behind the balcony. Alan Robertson surveyed the device with pride and affection. “This is the fourth model, and probably optimum; at least I don’t see any place for significant improvement. I use a hundred and sixty-seven rods converging upon the center of the reactor sphere. Each rod produces a quotum of energy and is susceptible to several types of adjustment to cope with the very large number of possible states. The number of particles to pack the universe full is on the order of ten raised to the power of sixty; the possible permutations these particles would number two raised to the power of ten raised to the power of sixty. The universe, of course, is built of many different particles, which makes the final number of possible, or let us say, thinkable states a number like two raised to the power of ten raised to the power of sixty, all times x, where x is the number of particles under consideration. A large, unmanageable number, which we need not consider, because the conditions we deal with - the possible variations of planet Earth - are far fewer.”