by Jack Vance
“Perhaps a week.”
“There’s nothing here to see. A day is sufficient.”
Ghyl shrugged. “It well may be.”
“Nothing but drabness and drudgery. You’ll find no splendor here, save up on the eyries. Do you know they just raised our percentage? It’s 1.46 percent now, when for so long it was 1.18. Do you charge a percentage on Earth?”
“A different system is in force.”
“I take it that you are importing no duplicated, machine-manufactured or plagiarized articles for distribution either gratis or for profit?”
“None.”
“Very well, Sir Hartwig. Pass on, if you will.”
Ghyl walked out into the well-remembered hall. At a Spay booth he placed a call to Grand Lord Dugald the Boimarc, at his eyrie in Vashmont Precinct.
The screen displayed a white disk on a dark blue ground. A courteous voice spoke: “Grand Lord Dugald is away from his eyrie. He will be pleased for you to leave a memorandum of your business.”
“I am a grandee of Earth, just now arrived. Where may I find Lord Dugald?”
“He attends a fête, at the eyrie of Lord Parnasse the Underline.”
“I will call there.”
A lordling, thin of face, with varnished black hair dressed in a fanciful sweep over his forehead, responded to the second call. He listened with exquisite hauteur, turned away without a word. A moment later Lord Parnasse appeared.
Ghyl put on a style of amused condescension. “I am Sir Hartwig Thorn, touring from Earth. I called to pay my respects to Grand Lord Dugald, and was referred to your eyrie.”
Parnasse, thin and keen like the lordling, with a darkly florid complexion, examined Ghyl up and down. “I am honored to make your acquaintance. Lord Dugald is at my eyrie, enjoying an entertainment.” He hesitated a barely perceptible instant. “I would be glad to welcome you to my eyrie, especially if your business with Lord Dugald is urgent.”
Ghyl laughed. “It has waited many years, and could well wait a day or so longer; but I would be pleased to settle it as soon as possible.”
“Very good, sir. You are where?”
“At the Godero space-port.”
“If you will go to Bureau C and mention my name, a conveyance will be put at your disposal.”
“I will arrive shortly.”
It was the common assumption among ordinary recipients that the lords lived in splendor, surrounded by exquisite objects, breathing delightful odors, attended by beautiful youths and maidens. Their beds, by repute, were air-fluff and wildflower down; each meal was said to be a banquet of delicious confections and the choicest Gade wines. Even under the load of his preoccupations, Ghyl felt something of the old thrill and wonder as the air-car rose toward the eyrie. He was discharged upon a terrace enclosed by a white balustrade, with all the expanse of Ambroy below. Two wide steps led to an upper terrace, with the palace of Lord Parnasse beyond.
Ghyl instructed the air-car to wait. He mounted the steps, approached the portal, beside which stood a pair of Garrion in dull red livery. Through tall windows swagged with golden-satin drapes a splendid assembly of lords and ladies was visible.
Ghyl entered the palace without challenge from the Garrion and halted to watch the lords and ladies at their entertainment. There was little noise. All spoke in fluttering arch whispers, and laughed, when they did so, almost soundlessly, as if each were vying to produce the most animation, the most entrancing visual display with the least sound.
Ghyl looked around the room: elegance, certainly, and a subtle suffusion of light which disguised and dissembled rather than illuminated. The floor was a checker of moth-wing brown and mustard yellow. For furniture there were couches upholstered in bottle-green plush—to Ghyl’s eyes of an eccentric and over-refined design, certainly not the work of the Ambroy furniture-makers. The walls were hung with tapestries, apparently imported from Damar. Splendor and luxury indeed, thought Ghyl, but there was also a curious intimation of shabbiness: the make-shift insubstantiality of a stage-set. The air, despite the soft lights and sumptuous drapes, lacked ease and richness; the activity lacked spontaneity. It was, thought Ghyl, like watching puppets play at festivity, rather than watching festivity itself. Small wonder, he thought, that lords and ladies attended such functions as the County Ball, where they could participate in the passions of the underlings…As he thought of the County Ball, he saw Shanne, wearing a wonderful gown of muted lemon yellow, with ribbons and flounces of ivory. Ghyl watched in fascination as she stood talking in hushed half-whispers to a gallant young lord. With what charming eagerness did she perform her wiles: smiles, pouts, roguish tilts of the head, pretty little outrages, sham startlements, mock provocations, grimaces of delight, dismay, bewilderment, consternation.
A tall thin lord approached: Lord Parnasse. He halted, bowed. “Sir Hartwig Thorn?”
Ghyl bowed in return. “I am he.”
“I trust you find my eyrie to your liking?” Lord Parnasse’s voice was light, dry, with the faintest possible overtone of condescension.
“It is delightful.”
“If your business with Lord Dugald is urgent, I will take you to him. When you have finished, you may enjoy yourself without restraint.”
“I would not wish to presume upon your hospitality,” said Ghyl. “As you see, I have ordered the air-car to wait. My business probably will require no great time.”
“As you wish. Be good enough, then, to follow me.”
Shanne had noticed Ghyl; she stared at him in fascination. Ghyl gave her a smile and a nod; it made no great difference if she recognized him. Puzzled and thoughtful, she turned to watch as Ghyl followed Lord Parnasse to a small side-room hung with blue satin. At a little marquetry table sat Grand Lord Dugald the Boimarc.
“Here is Sir Hartwig Thorn of Earth who has a matter to discuss with you,” said Parnasse. He gave a stiff bow, departed.
Grand Lord Dugald, portly, middle-aged, with a plum-colored complexion, stared at Ghyl. “Do I know you? You have aspects I find familiar. What was your name once more?”
“My name is irrelevant,” said Ghyl. “You may think of me as Prince Emphyrio of Ambroy.”
Dugald stared at him coldly. “This seems an over-extravagant joke.”
“Dugald, Grand Lord as you are called, your entire life is an extravagant joke.”
“Eh? What’s this?” Dugald heaved himself to his feet. “What is all this about? You are no man of Earth! You have the voice of an underman. What farce is this?” Dugald turned to summon the Garrion who stood at the end of the hall.
“Wait,” said Ghyl. “Listen to me, then decide what to do. If you call the Garrion now, you lose all of your options.”
Dugald stared, his face an apoplectic purple, his mouth opening and closing. “I know you, I have seen you. I remember your way of speaking… Can it be? You are Ghyl Tarvoke, who was expelled! Ghyl Tarvoke, the pirate! The great thief!”
“I am Ghyl Tarvoke.”
“I should have known, when you said ‘Emphyrio’. What an outrage to find you here! What do you want of me? Revenge? You deserved your punishment!” Lord Dugald looked at Ghyl in new wrath. “How did you escape? You were expelled!”
“True,” said Ghyl. “Now I am back once more. You destroyed my father, you set about to destroy me. I feel no great pity for you.”
Lord Dugald once more turned toward the Garrion; once again Ghyl held up his hand. “I carry a weapon; I can kill you and the Garrion as well. You would do best to hear me out; it will take no great time. Then you can decide upon your course of action.”
“Speak then!” bugled Lord Dugald. “Say what you must and go!”
“I spoke the name Emphyrio. He lived two thousand years ago, and thwarted the puppet-masters of Damar. He awoke the Wirwans to their own sentience; he persuaded them to peace. Then he went to Damar, and spoke in the Catademnon. Do you know of the Catademnon?”
“No,” said Lord Dugald contemptuously. “Speak on.”
> “The puppet-makers drove a spike through Emphyrio’s head, then they contrived a new campaign. What they had not gained by violence, they hoped to take by craft. After the Empire Wars they repaired the city; they installed Overtrend and Underline, they established Boimarc. They also organized Thurible Co-operative and thereafter Boimarc sold to Thurible, and perhaps bought from Thurible as well. Puppet-makers indeed! What need had the Damarans of puppets? They used the folk of Fortinone for their puppets, and robbed us of our wealth.”
Dugald rubbed his nose with his two forefingers. “How do you know all this?”
“How could it be otherwise? You called me a thief, a pirate. But you are the thief and pirate! More accurately, you are a puppet controlled by thieves.”
Lord Dugald seemed to swell in his chair. “So now. So now you insult me as well?”
“No insult: the literal truth. You are a puppet of a type created long ago in the Damaran glands.”
Lord Dugald stared hard at Ghyl. “You are certain of this?”
“Of course. Lords? Ladies?” Ghyl gave a harsh laugh. “What a joke! You are excellent replicas of man—but you are puppets.”
“Who infected you with such fantastic views?” demanded Lord Dugald in a stifled voice.
“No one. At Garwan I watched a Damaran walk; it walked with soft feet, as if its feet hurt. On Maastricht I remembered the lords and ladies walking just so. I remembered how they dreaded the light, the open sky; how they wished to run to the mountains to hide: like Wirwans, like Damarans. I remembered the color of their skin: the tone of pink that sometimes tends toward Damaran purple. On Maastricht I wondered how human-seeming folk could act so strangely. How was I so innocent? And so many generations of men and women: how could they have been so stupid, so unperceptive? Simple enough. A fraud so large cannot be comprehended: the idea is rejected.”
As Ghyl spoke Dugald’s face began to quiver and work in a most peculiar fashion, his mouth pulling in and out, his eyes bulging, the side of his head quivering and pulsing, so that Ghyl wondered whether he might be undergoing a seizure. Finally Dugald blurted: “Foolishness…Trash…Wicked nonsense…”
Ghyl shook his head. “No. Once the idea takes hold, everything is clear. Look!” He pointed to the hangings. “You stifle yourself in cloth like the Damarans; you have no music; you cannot breed children with true men; you even have a strange odor.”
Dugald sank slowly into his chair, and for a moment was silent. Then he glanced craftily sidewise at Ghyl. “How far have you communicated these wild suppositions?”
“Widely enough,” said Ghyl. “I would not care to come here otherwise.”
“Hah! Who have you informed?”
“First, I sent a memorandum to the Historical Institute.”
Dugald gave a sick groan. Then, with a pitiful attempt at bravado, he declared: “They will never heed such a farrago! Who else?”
“It would avail you nothing to kill me,” said Ghyl politely. “I realize that you would like to do so. I assure you it would be useless. Worse than useless. My friends would spread the news, not only throughout Fortinone, but across the human universe: how the lords are but puppets, how their pride is play-acting, how they have cheated the folk who trusted them.”
Dugald hunched down into his chair. “The pride is not counterfeit: it is true pride. Shall I tell you something? Only I, Grand Lord Dugald the Boimarc, of all the lords, have no pride. I am humble, I am purple with care—because only I know the truth. All the others—they are blameless. They realize their difference; they assume this to be the measure of their superiority. Only I am not proud; only I know who I am.” He gave a piteous groan. “Well, I must pay your demands. What do you want? Wealth? A space-yacht? A town-house? All these?”
“I want only truth. Truth must be known.”
Dugald gave a croak of protest. “What can I do! Would you have me destroy my people? Honor is all we have: what else? I alone am without honor, and look at me! See how I fare! I am different from all the rest. I am a puppet!”
“You alone know?”
“I alone. Before I die I will instruct another and doom him as I long ago was doomed.”
Into the alcove came Lord Parnasse. He looked with inquisitive eyes from Ghyl to Lord Dugald. “You are still at your business? We are almost ready to dine.” He addressed Ghyl: “You will join us?”
Ghyl gave a strained laugh. Lord Parnasse lifted his eyebrows. “Certainly,” said Ghyl. “I will be pleased to do so.”
Lord Parnasse bowed curtly, departed the alcove.
Lord Dugald contrived a face of bluff bonhomie. “Well, then let us consider the matter. You are not a Chaoticist; I’m sure you do not wish to destroy a time-tested socialty; after all—”
Ghyl held up his hand. “Lord Dugald, whatever else, the deception must be ended, and restitution must be made to the people you have cheated. If you and your ‘socialty’ can survive these steps, well and good. I bear malice only toward you and Damarans, not the Lords of Ambroy.”
“What you demand is impossible,” declared Dugald. “You have come here swaggering and threatening, now my patience is exhausted! I warn you, with great fervor, to spread no falsehoods or incitements.”
Ghyl turned toward the door. “The first folk to know shall be Lord Parnasse and his guests.”
“No!” cried Dugald in anguish. “Would you destroy us all?”
“The deception must be ended; there must be restitution.”
Dugald held out his arms in despair and pathos. “You are obdurate!”
“‘Obdurate’? I am passionate. You killed my father. You have robbed and cheated for two thousand years. You expect me to be otherwise?”
“I will mend matters. The rate will return to 1.18 percent. The underlings will receive an appreciably higher return; I will so demand. You cannot imagine how insistent are the Damarans!”
“The truth must be known.”
“But what of our honor?”
“Depart Halma. Take your folk to a far planet, where none know your secret.”
Dugald gave a cry of wild anguish. “How would I explain so drastic an act?”
“By the truth.”
Dugald stared Ghyl eye to eye, and Ghyl, for a strange brief instant, felt himself looking into unfathomable Damaran emptiness.
Dugald must also have found a quality to daunt him. He turned, strode from the alcove, out into the great hall, where he climbed up on a chair. His voice rasped through the murmur, the half-heard whispers. “Listen to me! Listen, everyone! The truth must be told.”
The company swung around in polite surprise.
“The truth!” cried Dugald, “the truth must be told. Everyone must know at last.”
There was silence in the hall. Dugald looked wildly right and left, struggling to bring forth words. “Two thousand years ago,” he declared, “Emphyrio delivered Fortinone from those Damaran monsters known as Wirwan.
“Now another Emphyrio has come, to expel another race of Damaran monsters. He has insisted upon truth. Now you will hear truth.
“Almost two thousand years ago, with Ambroy in ruins, a new set of puppets were sent from Damar. We are those puppets. We have served our masters the Damarans, and have paid to them money wrung from the toil of the underfolk. This is the truth; now that it is known the Damarans no longer can coerce us.
“We are not lords; we are puppets.
“We have no souls, no minds, no identities. We are synthetics.
“We are not men, not even Damarans. Most of all, we are not lords. We are whimsies, fancies, contrivances. Honor? Our honor is as real as a wisp of smoke. Dignity? Pride? Ridiculous even to use the words.”
Dugald pointed to Ghyl. “He came here tonight calling himself Emphyrio, impelling me to truth.
“You have heard the truth.
“When the truth is finally told, there is no more to say.”
Dugald stepped down from his chair.
The room was silent.
&nbs
p; A chime sounded. Lord Parnasse stirred, looked around at his guests. “The banquet awaits us.”
Slowly the guests filed from the room. Ghyl stood aside. Shanne passed near him. She halted. “You are Ghyl. Ghyl Tarvoke.”
“Yes.”
“Once, long ago, you loved me.”
“But you never loved me.”
“Perhaps I did. Perhaps I loved you as much as I was able.”
“It was long ago.”
“Yes. Things are different now.” Shanne smiled politely, and gathering her skirts went her way.
Ghyl spoke to Lord Dugald. “Tomorrow you must speak to the undermen. Tell them the truth, as you have told the truth to your own folk. Perhaps they will not tear down your towers. If they are enraged beyond control, you must be prepared to depart.”
“Where? To the Meagher Mounts to join the Wirwans?”
Ghyl shrugged. Lord Dugald turned, Lord Parnasse waited. They passed into the banquet hall leaving Ghyl standing alone.
He turned and went out on the terrace, and stood for a moment looking over the ancient city which spread with faint lights glowing, to the Insse and beyond. Never had he seen so beautiful a sight.
He went to the air-car. “Take me to the Brown Star Inn.”
Chapter XXIV
The folk of Ambroy, so careful, so diligent, so frugal, were dazed for several hours after the announcement came over the Spay public announcement system. Work halted, folk went out into the streets, to look blankly into the sky toward Damar, up to the eyries on the Vashmont towers, then across town toward the Welfare Agency.
People spoke little to each other. Occasionally someone would give a short bark of harsh laughter, then become silent once more. Folk began to drift toward the Welfare Agency and by mid-day a great crowd stood in the surrounding plaza, staring at the grim old building.
Within was gathered the Cobol clan, holding an emergency meeting.
The crowd began to move restlessly. There were mutters, which swelling, became a vast susurrus. Someone, perhaps a Chaoticist, threw a stone, which broke a window. A face appeared in the gap, and an arm made admonitory motions, which seemed to irritate the crowd. Before there had been hesitancy and doubt as to the role of the Agency. But the angry gestures from the window seemed to put the Agency in the camp of those who had victimized the recipients; and, after all, had not the welfare agents enforced the regulations which made the swindle possible?