Wyst: Alastor 1716

by Jack Vance

  The oldest of the group, a gray-haired man of no great stature, at first glance appeared the least effectual of the four. He sat awry: neck twisted, head askew, legs splayed, elbows cocked at odd angles: a man sinewy and gaunt, with a long-nosed vulpine face. He spoke in a restless, peevish voice: “—heights give me to fret; even here between four walls I know that the soil lies far below; we should have requested a conference at low altitude. “

  “Water lies below, not soil,” growled another of the Whispers, a massive man with a rather surly expression. His hair, banging in lank black ringlets, made no concession to the fashionable Arrabin puff; of the group he seemed the most forceful and resolute.

  The third man said: “If the Connatic trusts his skin to these floors, never fear! Your own far less valuable pelt is safe.”

  “I fear nothing!” declared the old man. “Did I not climb the Pedestal? Did I not fly in the Sea Disk and the space ship?”

  “True, true,” said the third. “Your valor is famous.” This was a man somewhat younger than the other two and notably well-favored, with a fine straight nose and a smiling debonair expression. He sat close beside the fourth Whisper, a round-faced woman with a pale, rather coarse, complexion and a square assertive jaw.

  Esclavade entered the room. “The Connatic will give you his attention shortly. He suggests that meanwhile you might care to take refreshment” He waved toward the back wall; a buffet slid into the parlor. “Please serve yourselves; you will find that we have taken your preferences into account.” Only the Connatic noticed the twitch at the corner of Esclavade’s mouth.

  Esclavade departed the parlor. The crooked old Whisper at once jumped to his feet. “Let’s see what we have here.” He sidled toward the buffet. “Eh? Eh? What’s this? Gruff and deedle! Can the Connatic afford a trifle of banter for our poor deprived jaws?”

  The woman said in an even voice: “Surely he thinks it only courteous to serve familiar victuals to his guests.”

  The handsome man uttered a sardonic laugh. “The Connatic is hardly of egalistic persuasion. By definition he is the elite of the elite. There may be a message here?’

  The massive man went to the buffet and took a cake of gruff. “I eat it at home; I shall eat it here, and give the matter no thought.”

  The crooked man poured a cup of the viscous white liquid; be tasted, and made a wry grimace. “The deedle isn’t all that good.”

  Smiling, the Connatic went to sit in a heavy wooden chair. He touched a button and his image appeared in the Black Parlor. The Whispers jerked around. The two men at the buffet slowly put down their food; the handsome man started to rise, then changed his mind and remained in his place.

  Esclavade entered the Black , Parlor and addressed the image.

  “Sir, these are the Whispers of Arrabus Nation on Wyst. From Waunisse, the lady Fausgard.” Then he indicated the massive man. “From Uncibal, the gentleman Orgold.” The handsome man: “From Serce, the gentleman Lemiste.” The crooked man: “From Propunce, the gentleman Delfin.”

  The Connatic said: “I welcome you to Lusz. You will notice that I appear before you in projection; this is my invariable precaution, and many uncertainties are circumvented.”

  Fausgard said somewhat tartly, “As a monomarch, and the elite of the elite, I suppose you go in constant fear of assassination.”

  “It is a very real risk. I see hundreds of folk, of every condition. Some, inevitably, prove to be madmen who fancy me a cruel and luxurious tyrant. I use an entire battery of techniques to avoid their murderous, if well-meant, assaults?’

  Fausgard gave her head a stubborn shake. The Connatic thought Here is a woman of rock-hard conviction. Fausgard said: “Still, as absolute master of several trillion persons, you must recognize that yours is a position of unnatural privilege.”

  The Connatic thought: She is also of a somewhat contentious disposition. Aloud he said, “Naturally! The knowledge is never far from my mind, and is balanced, or neutralized, only by the fact of its total irrelevance.”

  “I fear that you leave me behind.”

  “The idea is complex, yet simple. I am I, who by reason of events beyond my control am Connatic. If I were someone else, I would not be Connatic; this is indisputable. The corollary is also clear: there would be a Connatic who was not I. He, like I, would ponder the singularity of his condition. So, you see, I as Connatic discover no more marvelous privilege to my life than you in your condition as Fausgard the Whisper.”

  Fausgard laughed uncertainly. She started to reply only to be preceded by the suave Lemiste. “Sir, we are here not to analyze your person, or your status, or the chances of fate. In fact, as pragmatic egalists, we deny the existence of Fate, as a supernormal or ineffable entity. Our mission is more specific.’

  “I shall be interested to hear it.”

  “Arrabus has existed one hundred years as an egalistic nation. We are unique in the Cluster, perhaps across the Gaean universe. In a short time, at our Centenary festival, we celebrate a century of achievement.”

  The Connatic reflected in some puzzlement: They take a tone rather different from what I had expected! Once more: take nothing, ever, for granted! He said: “I am of course aware of, the Centenary, and I am considering your kind invitation to be on hand.”

  Lemiste continued, in a voice somewhat quick and staccato: “As you know we have constructed an enlightened society, dedicated to full egalism and individual fulfillment. We are naturally anxious to advertise our achievements, both for glory and for material benefit: hence our invitation. But let me explain. Ordinarily the Connatic’s presence at an egalistic festival might be considered anomalous, even a compromise of principle. We hope, however, that, should you choose to attend, you will put aside your elitist role and for a period become one with us: residing in our blocks, riding the man-ways, attending the public spectacle& You will thereby apprehend our institutions on a personal basis.”

  After a moment’s thoughtful silence the Connatic said: “This is an interesting proposal. I must give it serious attention. You have taken refreshment? I could have offered you more elaborate fare, but in view of your principles I desisted.”

  Delfin, who had restlessly restrained his tongue, at last broke forth. “Our principles are real enough! That is why we are here: to advance them, but yet to protect them from their own success. Everywhere in the Cluster live jackals and interlopers, by the millions; they consider Arrabus a charitable hospice, where they flock by the myriads to batten upon the good things which we have earned through toil and sacrifice. It is done in the name of immigration, which we want to stop, but always we are thwarted by the Law of Free Movement. We have therefore certain demands that we feel—”

  Fausgard quickly interrupted: “More properly: ‘requests.’”

  Delfin waved his arm in the air. “Demands, requests, it all comes out the same end! We want, first, a stop to immigration; second, Cluster funds to feed the hordes already on hand; third, new machinery to replace the equipment worn out nurturing the pests.”

  Delfin apparently was not popular with his fellow Whispers; each sought to suggest disassociation from Delfin’s rather vulgar manners.

  Fausgard spoke in a tone of brittle facetiousness: “Well then, Delfin; let’s not bore the Connatic with a tirade.”

  Delfin slanted her a crooked grin. “Tirade, is it? When one talks of wolves, one does not describe mice. The Connatic values plain talk, so why sit here simpering with our fingers up our arses? Yes, yes, as you like. I’ll hold my tongue.” He squinted toward the Connatic. “I warn you, she’ll use an hour to repeat what I gave you in twenty seconds.”

  Fausgard ignored the remark. “Sir, the Whisper Lemiste has spoken of our Centenary: this has been the primary purpose of our deputation. But other problems, to which Whisper Delfin has alluded, also exist, and perhaps we might also consider them at this time.”

  “By all means,” said the Connatic. “It is my function to mitigate difficulties, if effectuation
is fair, feasible and countenanced by Allastrid Basic Law.”

  Fausgard said earnestly, “Our problems can be expressed in very few words—”

  Delfin could not restrain himself. “A single word is enough: immigrants! A thousand each week! Apes and lizards, airy aesthetes, languid ne’er-do-wells with nothing on their minds but girls and bonter. We are not allowed to halt them! Is it not absurd?”

  Lemiste said smoothly: “Whisper Delfin is exuberant in his terms; many of the immigrants are worthy idealists. Still, many others are little better than parasites.”

  Delfin would not be denied. “Were they all saints, the flow must be halted! Would you believe it? An immigrant excluded me from my own apartment!”

  Fausgard said wryly: “Here may be the source of Whisper Delfin’s fervor.”

  Orgold spoke for the first time, in plangent disgust: “We sound like a gaggle of cackshaws.”

  The Connatic said reflectively: “A thousand a week in a population of three billion is not a large percentage.”

  Orgold replied in a business-like manner, which affected the Connatic more favorably than did Orgold’s coarse and vaguely untidy appearance. “Our facilities already are overextended. At this moment we need eighteen new sturge plants—”

  Lemiste helpfully inserted an annotation: “‘Sturge’ is raw food-slurry.”

  “—a new deep layer of drains, tanks and feeders, a thousand new blocks. The toil involved is tremendous. The Arm-bins do not wish to devote whole lifetimes to toil. So steps must be taken. First, and perhaps least—if only to quiet Delfin—the influx of immigrants must be halted.”

  “Difficult,” said the Connatic. “Basic Law guarantees freedom of movement.”

  Delfin cried out: “Egalism is envied across the Cluster! Since all Alastor cannot come to Arrabus, then egalism must be spread across the Cluster. This should be your immediate duty!”

  The Connatic showed the trace of a somber smile. “I must study your ideas with care. At the moment their logic eludes me.”

  Delfin muttered_ under his breath, and swung sulkily sideways in his chair. He snapped across his shoulder: “The logic is the immigrants’ feet; in their multitudes they march on Arrabus!”

  “A thousand a week? Ten times as many Arrabins commit suicide.”

  “Nothing is, thereby proved!”

  The Connatic gave an indifferent shrug and turned a dispassionate inspection around the group. Odd, he reflected, that Orgold, Lemiste and Fausgard, while patently uninterested in Delfin’s views, should allow him to act as spokesman, and to present absurd demands, thereby diminishing the dignity of them all. Lemiste’s perceptions were perhaps the keenest of the group. He managed a deprecatory smile. “The Whispers are necessarily strong-minded, and we do not always agree on how best to solve our problems.”

  Fausgard said shortly: “Or even to identify them, for that matter.”

  Lemiste paid her no heed. “In essence, our machinery is obsolescent. We need new equipment, to produce more goods more efficiently.”

  “Are you then requesting a grant of money?”

  “This certainly would help, on a continuing basis.”

  “Why not reclaim the lands to north and south? At one time they supported a population.”

  Lemiste gave his head a dubious shake. “Arrabins are an urban folk; we know nothing of agriculture.”

  The Connatic rose to his feet. “I will send expert investigators to Arrabus. They will analyze your situation and make recommendations.”

  Tension broke loose in Fausgard; she exclaimed sharply: “We don’t want investigators or study commissions; they’ll tell us: ‘Do this! Do that!’—all contra-egalistic! We want no more competition and greed; we can’t abandon our gains!”

  “Be assured that I will personally study the matter,” said the Connatic.

  Orgold dropped his air of stolid detachment. “Then you will come to Wyst?”

  “Remember,” Lemiste called out cheerfully, “you are invited to participate at the Centenary!”

  “I will consider the invitation most carefully. Now then, I noticed you showed only small interest in the collation I set forth; you might prefer a more adventurous cuisine, and I wish you to be my guests. Along the lower promenades are hundreds of excellent restaurants; please dine where you like and instruct the attendant to place all charges to the Connatic’s account.”

  “Thank you,” said Fausgard rather tersely. “That is most gracious.”

  The Connatic turned to go, then halted as if on sudden thought. “By the way, who is Jantiff Ravensroke?”

  The Whispers stared at him in frozen attitudes of doubt and wonder. Lemiste said at last: “Jantiff Ravensroke? I do not recognize the name.”

  “Nor I!” cried Delfin, hoarse and truculent.

  Fausgard numbly shook her head and Orgold merely gazed impassively at a point above the Connatic’s head.

  Lemiste asked: “Who is this Jantiff?”

  “A person who has corresponded with me; it is no great matter. If I visit Arrabus I will take the trouble to look him up. Good evening to you all.”

  His image moved into the shadows at the side of the room, and faded.

  In the dressing room the Connatic removed his casque. “Esclavade?”

  “Sir?”

  ‘What do you think of the Whispers?”

  “An odd group. I detect voice tremor in Fausgard and Le-mists. Orgold’s assurance is impervious to tension. Delfin lacks all restraint. The name ‘Jantiff Ravensroke’ may not be unfamiliar to them.”

  “There is a mystery here,” said the Connatic. “Certainly they did not travel all the way from Wyst to make a series of impossible proposals, quite at odds to their stated purposes.”

  “I agree. Something has altered their viewpoint”

  “I wonder if there is a connection with Jantiff Ravensroke?”

  Chapter 2

  Jantiff Ravensroke had been born in comfortable circumstances at Frayness on Zeck, Alastor 503. His father, Lile Ravensroke, calibrated micrometers at the Institute of Molecular design; his mother held a part-time job as technical analyst at Orion Instruments. Two sisters, Ferfan and Juille, specialized respectively in a sub-phase of condaptery[5] and the carving of mooring posts.[6]

  At the junior academy Jantiff, a tall thin young man with a long bony face and lank black hair, trained first in graphic design, then, after a year, reoriented himself into chromatics and perceptual psychology. At senior school he threw himself into the history of creative imagery, despite the opinion of his family that he was spreading himself too thin. His father pointed out that he could not forever delay taking a specialty, that unrelated enthusiasms, while no doubt entertaining, would seem to merge into frivolity and even irresponsibility.

  Jantiff listened with dutiful attention, but soon thereafter he chanced upon an old manual of landscape painting, which insisted that only natural pigments could adequately depict natural objects; and, further, that synthetic substances, being bogus and unnatural, subconsciously influenced the craftsman and inevitably falsified his work. Jantiff found the argument convincing and began to collect, grind and blend umbers and others, barks, roots, berries, the glands of fish and the secretions of nocturnal rodents, while his family looked on in amusement.

  Lile Ravensroke again felt obliged to correct Jantiff’s instability. He took an oblique approach to the topic. “I take it that you are not reconciled to a life of abject poverty?”

  Jantiff, naturally mild and guileless, with occasional lapses into absent-mindedness, responded without hesitation: “Certainly not! I very much enjoy the good things of life!”

  Lile Ravensroke went on, in a casual voice: “I expect that you intend to earn these good things not by crime or fraud but through your own good efforts?”

  “Of course!” said Jantiff, now somewhat puzzled. “That goes without saying.”

  “Then how do you expect to profit from your training to date: which is to say, a smattering of this a
nd an inkling of that? ‘Expertise’ is the word you must concentrate upon! Sure control over a special technique: this is how you put coin in your pocket!”

  In a subdued voice Jantiff stated that he had not yet discovered a specialty which he felt would interest him across the entire span of his existence. Lile Ravensroke replied that to his almost certain knowledge no divine fiat had ever ordained that toil must be joyful or interesting. Aloud Jantiff acknowledged the rightness of his father’s views, but privately clung to the hope that somehow he might turn his frivolity to profit.

  Jantiff finished his term at senior school with no great distinction, and the summer recess lay before him. During these few brief months he must define the course of his future: specialized study at the lyceum, or perhaps apprenticeship as a technical draftsman. It seemed that youth, with all its joyful vagaries, lay definitely behind! In a morose mood Jantiff happened to pick up the old treatise on the depiction of landscapes, and there he encountered a tantalizing passage:

  For certain craftsmen, the depiction of landscapes becomes a lifelong occupation. Many interesting examples of the craft exist. Remember: the depiction reflects not only the scene itself but the craftsman’s private point of view!

  Another aspect to the craft must at least be mentioned: sunlight. The basic adjunct to the visual process varies from world to world, from a murky red glow to a crackling purple-white glare. Each of these lights makes necessary a different adjustment of the subjective-objective tension. Travel, especially trans-planetary travel, is a most valuable training for the depictive craftsman. He learns to look with a dispassionate eye; he clears away films of illusion and sees objects as they are.

  There is one world where sun and atmosphere cooperate to produce an absolutely glorious light, where every surface quivers with its true and just color. The sun is the white star Dwan and the fortunate world is Wyst, Alastor 1716.

  Juille and Ferfan decided to cure Jantiff of his wayward moods. They diagnosed his problem as shyness, and introduced him to a succession of bold and sometimes boisterous girls, in the hope of enhancing his social life. The girls quickly became either bored, puzzled or uneasy. Jantiff was neither ill-favored, with his black hair, blue-green eyes and almost aquiline profile, nor shy; nevertheless he lacked talent for small talk, and, he suspected, justly enough, that his unconventional yearnings would only excite derision were he rash enough to discuss them.