The Best of Jack Vance (1976) SSC
Page 33
Duray asked quietly, “Just how do you mean, Bob?” Alan Robertson made a peremptory sound, but Duray said, “Let him say what he likes and make an end to it. He plans to do so anyway.” There was a moment of silence. Bob looked across the terrace to where the three Orientals were transferring the remains of the beef to a service cart.
“Well?” Alan Robertson asked softly. “Have you made your choice?” Bob held out his hands in ostensible bewilderment. “I don’t understand you! I want only to vindicate myself and the Rumfuddlers. I think we have done splendidly. Today we have allowed Torquemada to roast a dead ox instead of a living heretic; Marquis de Sade has fulfilled his obscure urges by caressing seared flesh with a basting brush, and did you notice the zest with which Ivan the Terrible hacked up the carcass? Nero, who has real talent, played his violin. Attila, Genghis Khan, and Mao Tse-tung efficiently served the guests. Wine was poured by Messalina, Lucrezia Borgia, Delilah, and Gilbert’s charming wife, Elizabeth. Only Gilbert failed to demonstrate his rehabilitation, but at least he provided us a touching and memorable picture: Gilles de Rais, Elizabeth Bathory, and their three virgin daughters. It was sufficient. In every case we have shown that rehabilitation is not an empty word.”
“Not in every case,” said Alan Robertson, “specifically that of your own.”
Bob looked at him askance. “I don’t follow you.”
“No less than Gilbert are you ignorant of your background. I will now reveal the circumstances so that you may understand something of yourself and try to curb the tendencies which have made your cognate an exemplar of cruelty, stealth, and treachery.”
Bob laughed: a brittle sound like cracking ice. “I admit to a horrified interest.”
“I took you from a forest a thousand miles north of this very spot while I traced the phylogeny of the Norse gods, your name was Loki. For reasons which are not now important I brought you back to San Francisco, and there you grew to maturity.”
“So I am Loki.”
“No. You are Bob Robertson, just as this is Gilbert Duray, and here is his wife, Elizabeth. Loki, Gilles de Rais, Elizabeth Bathory: These names applied to human material which has not functioned quite as well. Gilles de Rais, judging from all evidence, suffered from a brain tumor; he fell into his peculiar vices after a long and honorable career. The case of Princess Elizabeth Bathory is less clear, but one might suspect syphilis and consequent cerebral lesions.”
“And what of poor Loki?” inquired Bob with exaggerated pathos.
“Loki seemed to suffer from nothing except a case of old-fashioned meanness.”
Bob seemed concerned. “So that these qualities apply to me?”
“You are not necessarily identical to your cognate. Still, I advise you to take careful stock of yourself, and so far as I am concerned, you had best regard yourself as on probation.”
“Just as you say.” Bob looked over Alan Robertson’s shoulder.
“Excuse me; you’ve spoiled the party, and everybody is leaving. I want a word with Roger.”
Duray moved to stand in his way, but Bob shouldered him aside and strode across the terrace, with Duray glowering at his back.
Elizabeth said in a mournful voice, “I hope we’re at the end of all this.” Duray growled. “You should never have listened to him.”
“I didn’t listen; I read about it in one of Bob’s books; I saw your picture; I couldn’t-”
Alan Robertson intervened. “Don’t harass poor Elizabeth; I consider her both sensible and brave; she did the best she could.” Bob returned. “Everything taken care of,” he said cheerfully. “All except one or two details.”
“The first of these is the return of the passway. Gilbert and Elizabeth -
not to mention Dolly, Joan, and Ellen - are anxious to return to Home.”
“They can stay here with you,” said Bob. “That’s probably the best solution.”
“I don’t plan to stay here,” said Alan Robertson in mild wonder. “We are leaving at once.”
“You must change your plans,” said Bob. “I have finally become bored with your reproaches. Roger doesn’t particularly care to leave his home, but he agrees that now is the time to make a final disposal of the matter.”
Alan Robertson frowned in displeasure. “The joke is in very poor taste, Bob.”
Roger Waille came from the house, his face somewhat glum.
“They’re all closed. Only the main gate is open.” Alan Robertson said to Gilbert: “I think that we will leave Bob and Roger to their Rumfuddle fantasies. When he returns to his senses, we’ll get your passway. Come along, then, Elizabeth! Girls!”
“Alan,” said Bob gently, “you’re staying here. Forever. I’m taking over the machine.”
Alan Robertson asked mildly: “How do you propose to restrain me?
By force?”
“You can stay here alive or dead; take your choice.”
“You have weapons, then?”
“I certainly do.” Bob displayed a pistol. “There are also the servants.
None have brain tumors or syphilis; they’re all just plain bad.” Roger said in an awkward voice, “Let’s go and get it over.” Alan Robertson’s voice took on a harsh edge. “You seriously plan to maroon us here, without food?”
“Consider yourself marooned.”
“I’m afraid that I must punish you. Bob, and Roger as well.” Bob laughed gaily. “You yourself are suffering from brain disease -
megalomania. You haven’t the power to punish anyone.”
“I still control the machine, Bob.”
“The machine isn’t here. So now-”
Alan Robertson turned and looked around the landscape, with a frowning air of expectation. “Let me see. I’d probably come down from the main gate; Gilbert and a group from behind the house. Yes, here we are.” Down the path from the main portal, walking jauntily, came two Alan Robertsons with six men armed with rifles and gas grenades.
Simultaneously from behind the house appeared two Gilbert Durays and six more men, similarly armed.
Bob stared in wonder. “Who are these people?”
“Cognates,” said Alan, smiling. “I told you I controlled the machine, and so do all my cognates. As soon as Gilbert and I return to our Earth, we must similarly set forth and in our turn do our part on other worlds cognate to this… Roger, be good enough to summon your servants. We will take them back to Earth. You and Bob must remain here.” Waille gasped in distress. “Forever?”
“You deserve nothing better,” said Alan Robertson. “Bob perhaps deserves worse.” He turned to the cognate Alan Robertsons. “What of Gilbert’s passway?”
Both replied, “It’s in Bob’s San Francisco apartment, in a box on the mantelpiece.”
“Very good,” said Alan Robertson. “We will now depart. Goodbye, Bob. Goodbye, Roger. I am sorry that our association ended on this rather unpleasant basis.”
“Wait!” cried Roger. “Take me back with you!”
“Goodbye,” said Alan Robertson. “Come along then, Elizabeth. Girls!
Run on ahead!”
• • •
XIII
Elizabeth and the children had returned to Home; Alan Robertson and Duray sat in the lounge above the machine. “Our first step,” said Alan Robertson, “is to dissolve our obligation. There are, of course, an infinite number of Rumfuddles at Ekshayans and an infinite number of Alans and Gilberts. If we visited a single Rumfuddle, we would, by the laws of probability, miss a certain number of the emergency situations. The total number of permutations, assuming that an infinite number of Alans and Gilberts makes a random choice among an infinite number of Ekshayans, is infinity raised to the infinite power. What percentage of this number yields blanks for any given Ekshayan, I haven’t calculated. If we visited Ekshayans until we had by our own efforts rescued at least one Gilbert and Alan set, we might be forced to scour fifty or a hundred worlds or more. Or we might achieve our rescue on the first visit. The wisest course, I believe, is
for you and I to visit, say, twenty Ekshayans. If each of the Alan and Gilbert sets does the same, then the chances for am particular Alan and Gilbert to be abandoned are one in twenty times nineteen times eighteen times seventeen, et cetera. Even then I think I will arrange that an operator check another five or ten thousand worlds to gather up that one lone chance…”
FAR AWAY, THERE ARE WORLDS NO ONE HAS EVER SEEN....
THE LAST CASTLE
The Mek was a manlike creature, native to a planet of Etamin. His tough rusty-bronze hide glistened metallically, the spines thrusting back from scalp and neck shone like gold. His sense organs were gathered in clusters at the site of a man’s ears, his visage was corrugated muscle, not dissimilar to the look of an uncovered human brain. This was the Mek solitary, a creature intrinsically as effective as man, but, working in the mass, by the teeming thousands, he seemed less admirable, less competent: a hybrid of subman and cockroach....
THE MOON MOTH
The houseboat had been built to the most exacting standards of Sirenese craftsmanship. 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; amidships were a pair of sleeping cabins, a dining saloon and a parlor saloon, opening upon an observation deck at the stern....
THEY ARE MYSTICAL, SOMETIMES FRIGHTENING WORLDS, AND THEY ARE BORN OF THE IMAGINATION OF ONE OF THE MASTER STORYTELLERS OF OUR TIME ... AND BEYOND.
“Jack Vance is remarkable. His landscapes are wholly imagined____Vance is eventually going to be
perceived as one of the foundation blocks of science fiction.”—Barry N. Malzberg