by Jack Vance
“Would you be kind enough to explain?”
Dodkin would be only too pleased to explain. Last week I had occasion to visit an old friend over by Claxton Abbey, a fine conformist, well adapted and cooperative, even if, alas, like myself, a junior executive. Of course, I mean no disrespect to good Davy Evans, like myself about ready for the pension—though little enough they allow nowadays
“The interpolation?”
“Yes, indeed. On my way home along the man-belt—on Sublevel Thirty-two, as I recall—I saw a workman of some sort—perhaps an electrical technician—toss several tools into a crevice on his way off-shift. I thought, now there’s a slovenly act—disgraceful! Suppose the man forgot where he had hidden his tools? They’d be lost! Our reserves of raw metallic ore are very low—that’s common knowledge and every year the ocean water becomes weaker and more dilute. That man had no regard for the future of Organization. We should cherish our natural resources,
do you not agree, sir?”
“I agree, naturally. But—”
“In any event, I returned here and added a memorandum to that effect into the material which goes up to the Assistant File Clerk. I thought that perhaps he’d be impressed and say a word to someone with influence—perhaps the Head File Clerk. In any event, there’s the tale of my interpolation. Naturally I attempted to give it weight by citing the inevitable diminution of our natural resources.”
“I see,” said Luke. “And do you frequently include interpolations into the day’s information?”
“Occasionally,” said Dodkin, “and sometimes, I’m glad to say, peo- pie more important than I share my views. Only three weeks ago I was delayed several minutes on my way between Claxton Abbey and Kitts- ville on Sublevel Thirty. I made a note of it, and last week I noticed that construction has commenced on a new eight-lane man-belt between the two points, a really magnificent and modem undertaking. A month ago I noticed a shameless group of girls daubed like savages with cosmetic. What a waste, I told myself; what vanity and folly! I hinted as much in a little message to the Under-File Clerk. I seem to be just one of the many with these views, for two days later a general order discouraging these petty vanities was issued by the Secretary of Education.”
“Interesting,” Luke muttered. “Interesting indeed. How do you include these—interpolations—into the information?”
Dodkin hobbled nimbly to the monitoring machine. “The output from the tanks comes through here. I print a bit on the typewriter and tuck it where the Under-Clerk will see it.”
“Admirable,” sighed Luke. “A man with your intelligence should have ranked higher in the Status List.”
Dodkin shook his placid old head. “I don’t have the ambition nor the ability. I’m fit for just this simple job, and that only barely. I’d take my pension tomorrow, only the Chief File Clerk asked me to stay on a bit until he could find a man to take my place. No one seems to like the quiet down here.”
“Perhaps you’ll have your pension sooner than you think,” said Luke.
Luke strolled along the glossy tube, ringed with alternate pale and dark refractions like a bull’s eye. Ahead was motion, the glint of metal, the mutter of voices. The entire crew of Tunnel Gang Number 3 stood idle and restless.
Fedor Miskitman waved his arm with uncharacteristic vehemence. “Grogatch! At your post! You’ve held up the entire crew!” His heavy face was suffused with pink. “Four minutes already we’re behind schedule.”
Luke strolled closer.
“Hurry!” bellowed Miskitman. “What do you think this is, a blasted promenade?”
If anything, Luke slackened his pace. Fedor Miskitman lowered his big head, staring balefully. Luke halted in front of him.
“Where’s your shovel?” Fedor Miskitman asked.
“I don’t know,” said Luke. “I’m here on the job. It’s up to you to provide tools.”
Fedor Miskitman stared unbelievingly. “Didn’t you take it to the warehouse?”
“Yes,” said Luke. “I took it there. If you want it go get it—
Fedor Miskitman opened his mouth. He roared, “Get off the job!”
“Just as you like,” said Luke. “You’re the foreman.”
“Don’t come back!” bellowed Miskitman. “I’ll report you before the day is out. You won’t gain status from me, I tell you that!”
“Status?” Luke laughed. “Go ahead. Cut me down to junior executive. Do you think I care? No. And I’ll tell you why. There’s going to be a change or two made. When things seem different to you, think of me.”
Luke Grogatch, Junior Executive, said good-bye to the retiring custodian of the staging chamber. “Don’t thank me, not at all,” said Luke. “I’m here by my own doing. In fact—well, never mind all that. Go up-side, sit in the sun, enjoy the air.”
Finally Dodkin, in mingled joy and sorrow, hobbled for the last time down the musty passageway to the chattering man-belt.
Luke was alone in the staging chamber. Around him hummed the near-inaudible rush of information. From behind the wall came the sense of a million relays clicking, twitching, meshing; of cylinders and trace- tubes and memory-lakes whirring with activity. At the monitoring machine the output streamed forth on a reel of yellow tape. Nearby rested the typewriter.
Luke seated himself. His first interpolation: what should it be? Freedom for the Nonconformists? Tunnel gang foreman to carry tools for the entire crew? A higher expense account for junior executives?
Luke rose to his feet and scratched his chin. Power...to be subtly applied. How should he use it? To secure rich perquisites for himself? Yes, of course, this he would accomplish, by devious means. And then—what? Luke thought of the billions of men and women living, and working in the Organization. He looked at the typewriter. He could shape their lives, change their thoughts, disorganize the Organization. Was this wise? Or right? Or even amusing?
Luke sighed. In his mind’s eye he saw himself standing on a high terrace overlooking the city. Luke Grogatch, Chairman of the Board. Not impossible, quite feasible. A little at a time, the correct interpola-
tions.. .Luke Grogatch, Chairman of the Board. Yes. This for a starter. But it was necessary to move cautiously, with great delicacy.
Luke seated himself at the typewriter and began to pick out his first interpolation.
THE DEVIL ON SALVATION
BLUFF
A few minutes before noon the sun took a lurch south and set.
Sister Mary tore the solar helmet from her fair head and threw it at the settee—a display that surprised and troubled her husband, Brother Raymond.
He clasped her quivering shoulders. “Now, dear, easy does it. A blow-up can’t help us at all.”
Tears were rolling down Sister Mary’s cheeks. “As soon as we start from the house the sun drops out of sight! It happens every time!”
“Well—we know what patience is. There’ll be another soon.”
“It may be an hour! Or ten hours! And we’ve got our jobs to do!”
Brother Raymond went to the window, pulled aside the starched lace curtains, peered into the dusk. “We could start now, and get up the hill before night.”
“Night?” cried Sister Mary. “What do you call this?”
Brother Raymond said stiffly, “I mean night by the Clock. Real night.”
“The Clock....” Sister Mary sighed, sank into a chair. “If it weren’t
for the Clock we’d all be lunatics.”
Brother Raymond, at the window, looked up toward Salvation Bluff, where the great clock bulked unseen. Mary joined him; they stood gazing through the dark. Presently Mary sighed. “I’m sorry, dear. But I get so upset.”
Raymond patted her shoulder. “It’s no joke living on Glory.”
Mary shook her head decisively. “I shouldn’t let myself go. There’s the Colony to think of. Pioneers can’t be weaklings.”
They stood close, drawing comfort from each other.
“Look!” said Raymond. He pointed. “A
fire, and up in Old Fleet- ville!”
In perplexity they watched the far spark.
“They’re all supposed to be down in New Town,” muttered Sister Mary. “Unless it’s some kind of ceremony... .The salt we gave them....”
Raymond, smiling sourly, spoke a fundamental postulate of life on Glory. “You can’t tell anything about the Flits. They’re liable to do most anything.”
Mary uttered a truth even more fundamental. “Anything is liable to do anything.”
“The Flits most liable of all.... They’ve even taken to dying without our comfort and help!”
“We’ve done our best,” said Mary. “It’s not our fault!”—almost as if she feared that it was.
“No one could possibly blame us.”
“Except the Inspector... .The Flits were thriving before the Colony came.”
“We haven’t bothered them; we haven’t encroached, or molested, or interfered. In fact we’ve knocked ourselves out to help them. And for thanks they tear down our fences and break open the canal and throw mud on our fresh paint!”
Sister Mary said in a low voice, “Sometimes I hate the Flits.... Sometimes 1 hate Glory. Sometimes I hate the whole Colony.”
Brother Raymond drew her close, patted the fair hair that she kept in a neat bun. “You’ll feel better when one of the suns comes up. Shall we start?”
“It’s dark,” said Mary dubiously. “Glory is bad enough in the daytime.”
Raymond shot his jaw forward, glanced up toward the Clock. “It is daytime. The Clock says it’s daytime. That’s Reality; we’ve got to cling to it! It’s our link with truth and sanity!”
“Very well,” said Mary, “we’ll go.”
Raymond kissed her cheek. “You’re very brave, dear. You’re a credit to the Colony.”
Mary shook her head. “No, dear. I’m no better or braver than any of the others. We came out here to found homes and live the Truth. We knew there’d be hard work. So much depends on everybody; there’s no room for weakness.”
Raymond kissed her again, although she laughingly protested and turned her head. “I still think you’re brave—and very sweet.”
Jack Vance
213
“Get the light,” said Mary. “Get several lights. One never knows how long these—these insufferable darknesses will last.”
They set off up the road, walking because in the Colony private power vehicles were considered a social evil. Ahead, unseen in the darkness, rose the Grand Montagne, the preserve of the Flits. They could feel the harsh bulk of the crags, just as behind them they could feel the neat fields, the fences, the roads of the Colony. They crossed the canal, which led the meandering river into a mesh of irrigation ditches. Raymond shone his light into the concrete bed. They stood looking in a silence more eloquent than curses.
“It’s dry! They’ve broken the banks again.”
“Why?” asked Mary. “Why? They don’t use the river water!”
Raymond shrugged. “I guess they just don’t like canals. Well,” he sighed, “all we can do is the best we know how.”
The road wound back and forth up the slope. They passed the lichen-covered hulk of a star-ship which five hundred years ago had crashed on Glory. “It seems impossible,” said Mary. “The Flits were once men and women just like us.”
“Not like us, dear,” Raymond corrected gently.
Sister Mary shuddered. “The Flits and their goats! Sometimes it’s hard to tell them apart.”
A few minutes later Raymond fell into a mudhole, a bed of slime, with enough water-seep to make it suckling and dangerous. Floundering, panting, with Mary’s desperate help, he regained solid ground, and stood shivering—angry, cold, wet.
“That blasted thing wasn’t there yesterday!” He scraped slime from his face, his clothes. “It’s these miserable things that make life so trying.”
“We’ll get the better of it, dear.” And she said fiercely: “Well fight it, subdue it! Somehow well bring order to Glory!”
While they debated whether or not to proceed, Red Robundus belled up over the northwest horizon, and they were able to take stock of the situation. Brother Raymond’s khaki puttees and his white shirt of course were filthy. Sister Mary’s outfit was hardly cleaner.
Raymond said dejectedly, “I ought to go back to the bungalow for a change.”
“Raymond—do we have time?”
“I’ll look like a fool going up to the Flits like this.”
“They’ll never notice.”
“How can they help?” snapped Raymond.
“We haven’t time,” said Mary decisively. “The Inspector’s due any day, and the Flits are dying like flies. They’ll say it’s our fault—and that’s the end of Gospel Colony.” After a puase she said carefully, “Not that we wouldn’t help the Flits in any event.”
“I still think I’d make a better impression in clean clothes,” said Raymond dubiously.
“Pooh! A fig they care for clean clothes, the ridiculous way they scamper around.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
A small, yellow-green sun appeared over the southwest horizon. “Here comes Urban— If it isn’t dark as pitch we get three or four suns at once!”
“Sunlight makes the crops grow,” Mary told him sweetly.
They climbed half an hour, then stopped to catch their breath, turned to look across the valley to the colony they loved so well. Seventy- two thousand souls on a checkerboard green plain, rows of neat white houses, painted and scrubbed, with snowy curtains behind glistening glass; laws and flower gardens full of tulips; vegetable gardens full of cabbages, kale and squash.
Raymond looked up at the sky. “It’s going to rain.”
Mary asked, “How do you know?”
“Remember the drenching we had last time Urban and Robundus were both in the west?”
Mary shook her head. “That doesn’t mean anything.”
“Something’s got to mean something. That’s the law of our universe—the basis for all our thinking!”
A gust of wind howled down from the ridges, carrying great curls and feathers of dust. They swirled with complicated colors, films, shades, in the opposing lights of yellow-green Urban and Red Robundus.
“There’s your rain,” shouted Mary over the roar of the wind. Raymond pressed on up the road. Presently the wind died.
Mary said, “I believe in rain or anything else on Glory when 1 see it.”
“We don’t have enough facts,” insisted Raymond. “There’s nothing magic in unpredictability.”
“It’s just—unpredictable.” She looked back along the face of the Grand Montagne. “Thank God for the Clock—something that’s dependable.”
The road wandered up the hill, through stands of homy spile, banks of gray scrub and purple thorn. Sometimes there was no road; then they had to cast ahead like surveyors; sometimes the road stopped at a bank or at a blank wall, continuing on a level ten feet above or below. These were minor inconveniences which they overcame as a matter of course. Only when Robundus drifted south and Urban ducked north did they become anxious.
“It wouldn’t be conceivable that a sun should set at seven in the evening,” said Mary. “That would be too normal, too matter-of-fact.”
At seven-fifteen both suns set. There would be ten minutes of magnificent sunset, another fifteen minutes of twilight, then night of indeterminate extent.
They missed the sunset because of an earthquake. A tumble of stones came pelting across the road; they took refuge under a jut of granite while boulders clattered into the road and spun on down the mountainside.
The shower of rocks passed, except for pebbles bouncing down as an afterthought. “Is that all?” Mary asked in a husky whisper.
“Sounds like it.”
“I’m thirsty.”
Raymond handed her the canteen; she drank.
“How much further to Fleetville?”
“Old Fleetville or New Town?”
“I don
’t care,” she said wearily. “Either one.”
Raymond hesitated. “As a matter of fact, I don’t know the distance to either.”
“Well, we can’t stay here all night.”
“It’s day coming up,” said Raymond as the white dwarf Maude began to silver the sky to the northeast.
“It’s night,” Mary declared in quiet desperation. “The Clock says it’s night; I don’t care if every sun in the galaxy is shining, including Home Sun. As long as the Clock says it’s night, it’s night!”
“We can see the road anyway... .New Town is just over the ridge; I recognize that big spile. It was here last time I came.”
Of the two, Raymond was the more surprised to find New Town where he placed it. They trudged into the village. “Things are awful quiet.”
There were three dozen huts, built of concrete and good clear glass, each with filtered water, a shower, wash-tub and toilet. To suit Flit prejudices the roofs were thatched with thorn, and there were no interior partitions. The huts were all empty.
Mary looked into a hut. “Mmmph—horrid!” She puckered her nose at Raymond. “The smell!”
The windows of the second hut were innocent of glass. Raymond’s face was grim and angry. “I packed that glass up here on my blistered back! And that’s how they thank us.”
“I don’t care whether they thank us or not,” said Mary. “I’m worried about the Inspector. He’ll blame us for—” she gestured—“this filth. After all it’s supposed to be our responsibility.”
Seething with indignation Raymond surveyed the village. He recalled the day New Town had been completed—a model village, thirty- six spotless huts, hardly inferior to the bungalows of the Colony. Arch- Deacon Burnette had voiced the blessing; the volunteer workers knelt to pray in the central compound. Fifty or sixty Flits had come down from the ridges to watch—a wide-eyed ragged bunch: the men all gristle and unkempt hair; the women sly, plump and disposed to promiscuity, or so the colonists believed.
After the invocation Arch-Deacon Burnette had presented the chief
of the tribe a large key of gilded plywood. “In your custody, Chief—the future and welfare of your people! Guard it—cherish it!”